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Southampton City Primary Care Trust (PCT) has beaten around 150 PCTs across the country to head a national table for cardiovascular drug savings, it has been revealed.
Out of 148 trusts in Britain, Southampton is outperforming all of its counterparts after making massive savings on statin prescriptions, according to the latest Government ‘better care, better value’ indicator statistics.
The savings have been made since 2003 as a planned PCT strategy when statins first became available generically and have been helped more recently by a new partnership with a third party healthcare company called ScriptSwitch, who provide locally customisable prescribing support software.
ScriptSwitch assists Southampton City PCT in making cost effective and consistent prescribing decisions whilst maintaining clinical freedom, offering locally selected cardiovascular medication alternatives and helping PCTs to promote their local prescribing formularies.
And the savings extend to all areas of prescribing, which means that the trust is making thousands of pounds worth of savings every month by providing prescribing alternatives for a whole range of illnesses.
Julia Bowey , Southampton City PCT’s Head of Pharmacy Services said: “We have had a local policy for first line use of lower cost generic statins for several years now and we have seen a gradual rise in the proportion prescribed in this way in line with robust clinical trial evidence. Over the last two years Scriptswitch software has helped us to re-inforce this and other messages to local clinicians right at the point of prescribing.”
ScriptSwitch currently saves the NHS £10.1 million per annum and managing director Mike Washburn said that the patented product was a great example of how the public and private sectors could work together.
He said: “Southampton City PCT is one of an elite group of primary care organisations in the UK who have already taken the initiative in fighting escalating costs within the NHS by providing up-to-date information to clinicians at the point of prescribing. This is helping them to significantly reduce the cost of their medicines. Put simply, hundreds of millions of pounds is being needlessly wasted across the NHS. If more PCTs supported our doctors and nurses to make more informed prescribing choices like Southampton City PCT has, then the NHS would be in a much healthier financial position.With the national IT programme under considerable pressure to deliver, ScriptSwitch provides a real local technology win for the NHS by helping to improve care whilst at the same time saving money which can than be re-invested in improving other services.”
19 March 2008 |
