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Since the Isle of Wight NHS PCT introduced ScriptSwitch into all of its practices as part of its Medicines Management Strategy, not only have they seen a reduction in their prescribing costs but also significant improvements in prescribing quality and patient safety.
The Isle of Wight NHS PCT provides healthcare to its resident population of approximately 138,500 patients on the Isle of Wight. During holiday season the number of patient’s doubles, with the Island receiving approximately 2.8 million visitors each year. Traditionally a PCT commissions care from a number of different hospitals and organisations and does not provide the majority of care itself. The Isle of Wight NHS PCT however is unique and as well as the commissioner, it is also the main provider of care.
In 2007 they undertook a project to introduce ScriptSwitch within all its practices and recent results demonstrate how successful the project has been, in particular:
- Prescribing costs are now >9% below the National Average - it is estimated that annual prescribing spend today is between £3-£5 million pounds lower than if no action had been taken.
- Increased quality and consistency of prescribing - nationally research has demonstrated that only 21-23% of patients who are prescribed bisphosphonates are co-prescribed calcium supplements. A local audit within Isle of Wight NHS PCT has demonstrated 79% co-prescribing, this is directly attributed to the messages ScriptSwitch delivers advising prescribers to co-prescribe and subsequently supporting NICE guidance implementation.
- Improved patient safety and the quality of care - the PCT historically had high emergency admissions to hospital for asthma / chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). With the support of ScriptSwitch messages targeting patient education on inhaler technique, emergency admissions have fallen by >50% and deaths by 75%.
Paul Jerram, Head of Medicines Management, Isle of Wight NHS PCT “ScriptSwitch is an essential part of our Medicines Management strategy, not only have we seen significant cost savings but a turnaround performance in areas such as respiratory, through the support ScriptSwitch delivers to GPs at the point of prescribing.
Clinicians are encouraged to swivel their computer screen to enable patients to see the ScriptSwitch messages that appear. ScriptSwitch then acts as a catalyst for patient involvement in discussions which result in improvements in concordance. Consequently patients are able to better understand reasons for change, safety issues and even see personal messages from consultants. ScriptSwitch is enabling us to deliver better health, better value and better care for patients”
As a result of ScriptSwitch more than 544,899 patient medications were reviewed and 82,603 improvements to patient medications were made by prescribers between Jan 07 and Dec 08. The actual savings delivered by ScriptSwitch total £790,431 from a potential of £3,495,768, at a cost of ownership of £94,094 for Jan 07 - Dec 08.
The next steps for the Isle of Wight PCT include enhanced benchmarking. GPs are requesting increased use of league tables and want to be compared to their colleagues.
Whilst the PCT already utilise monthly comparison tables and all GPs have supported the widespread sharing of non-patient confidential data, this will be increased substantially as locally GPs have demanded greater support of their desire to improve the quality of their prescribing.
Such data is already routinely used during GP appraisal and is available to tutors prior to training events. ScriptSwitch will be used as a tool in many future medicine management projects including in 2009/10 mental health, CVD, diabetes testing and treatment and antibiotic prescribing.
23 July 2009 |
