Sutton Manor Surgery & ScriptSwitch: A Practice View

Ref: A Practice View
Date: 9th January 2007

When Sutton Manor Surgery in Hull turned to ScriptSwitch as a solution for the problem of ensuring consistent prescribing, they had one major issue – a lack of the support from their PCT. That forced them to go it alone in having the system installed in their practice.

Dr Mitchell, a partner at the practice which has over 7300 patients, explained: “Because we have so many doctors it can be difficult to ensure that there is consistent prescribing at the practice. Whilst it’s easy for partners to stick to the practice formulary it is not so easy for registrars, who change practice every six months, or for a new F2 doctor who changes every four months. That was the issue we wanted to resolve.”

Undeterred by the fact that they had to go it alone, practice manager Barbara Young arranged for ScriptSwitch to come and present the system to the partners.

Barbara said: “We felt that ScriptSwitch could be a simple and effective solution to our problem as well as offering potential savings. The presentation highlighted the benefits and also served as a training session in how to use the system. The decision was made by the partners to install the ScriptSwitch system and in a couple of weeks we were up and running.”

Dr Mitchell added: “We were particularly attracted to ScriptSwitch because it is so simple for prescribers to use. All they have to do is type in their prescription as normal and, if the formulary is able to suggest an appropriate switch, one click is all that is needed to accept the recommendation.”

Using ScriptSwitch’s base switch profile as their starting point, Dr Mitchell and Barbara made changes to their practice approved list to ensure the most appropriate switches were available via the system.

That paid instant dividends as, in the first four and a half months of using ScriptSwitch, Sutton Manor Surgery achieved a 41.3 percent acceptance rate of switches offered by the system - providing an actual cost benefit to the practice of £14,408.

Commenting on the results, Dr Mitchell said: “The savings element of ScriptSwitch was not our primary concern when we installed the system. We were more concerned with getting our prescribing right and ensuring consistency amongst prescribing control doctors, but the savings were a real bonus. So far I think the implementation has been a real success.”

-ENDS-

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