Medicines Optimisation
Medicines play an important role in helping us to manage our wellbeing by preventing ill health and managing disease.
Medicines management can be defined in several ways:
- The clinical, cost-effective, safe and secure handling of medicines
- A system of processes and behaviours that determines how medicines are used by the NHS and patients
- Enabling people to make the best possible use of medicines
- Our goal is to achieve the best health outcomes for patients where medicines are involved.
Our Medicines Optimisation team look at the value medicines deliver, ensuring they are effective both clinically and financially. Their focus is: right medicine, right time.
The team supports clinicians, hospitals, pharmacies, care homes and the wider community with a goal to improve patient outcomes and medicine safety.
As part of their work, the Medicines Optimisation team offer information surrounding the responsible and appropriate use of medicines and also how to dispose of them safely to reduce wastage.
This is a webinar to introduce and explain a bit about the Medicines Optimisation Team and also a guide to useful resources that prescribers may want to use. This would be useful to Prescribers new to the area or newly Qualified. This does not count as one of the 2 training sessions required for the Quality contract.
Click here to access the webinar.
This useful graphic helps to explain how it works:
You can access our Medicines Optimisation and Prescribing Policies documents through the Document Store.
For Lancashire Prescribing Guidance and medicines recommendations, please see The Lancashire and South Cumbria Medicines Management Group for medicines recommendations, clinical guidelines, shared-care guidelines, information leaflets and position statements.
Medicine facts
Did you know?
- Over 700 million prescription items are dispensed in England each year with a cost approaching £8 billion
- One quarter of the population has a long-term condition
- One quarter of people over 60 have two or more long-term conditions
- With an ageing population, the use of multiple medicines (known as polypharmacy) is increasing
- Between 30-50% of medicines prescribed for long-term conditions are not taken as intended
Taken from: NICE: Medicines Optimisation Quality Standard.
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Learn more about Medicines Optimisation by visiting NHS England: Medicines Optimisation.