The total cost of prescriptions dispensed in the community fell sharply last year, according to new figures. Practices delivered a cost reduction of more than £300 million to the NHS as spending on prescriptions fell by 3.7% to £8.8 billion. Prescription costs peaked in 2015 at £9.26 billion and have been falling slightly since –…

Nearly every week we hear about the stresses and strains on the NHS and often the “c” word is the issue. In this case “c” stands for cost. The NHS has been with us for decades now, and at its inception there were much fewer medicines available to prescribe than today, and it is the…

Practices are to be offered social prescribing specialists to take on the task of pointing patients towards healthy activities, it was announced today. The NHS in England plans to recruit 1,000 of these link workers to support practices with social prescribing, it was reported. Recruits may be unqualified but will undergo intensive training. They will…

Over-prescribing may be partly responsible for the NHS’s soaring medicines bill, health secretary Matt Hancock has said. He ordered a review into the issue, appointing chief pharmaceutical officer Dr Keith Ridge to lead it. The government is hoping to reduce the 5% annual increase in the cost of prescribing – which has led spending on…

GP leaders say they have won a major concession as new rules are introduced to prevent the prescribing of medicines that are available cheaply over the counter. The government says its controversial new guidelines will save the NHS nearly £100 million a year in prescription costs. Its plans include preventing the “routine” prescribing of medication…

Repeat prescriptions are an integral part of everyday life at GP practices. And it’s no wonder – a late 2017 report written by the University of Bradford’s Dr Duncan Petty has revealed that almost half of the population (43%) are reliant on repeat prescriptions, resulting in over 800 million items of repeat medicines being dispensed…