Services

The safe and effective use of medicines within the new NHS is one of the key areas of particular importance for commissioners, GPs and patients.

As some Primary Care Organisations’ responsibilities are transferred to other organisations it is vital that medicines management functions and services are actively integrated into existing or new commissioning organisations, and that any provider services can deliver medicines management support to optimise medicines usage, improve patient outcomes and deliver a value added service.

Any local medicines management strategy will need to be applied consistently across GP practices and other services, and must support national policy development and local priorities. A robust medicines management strategy will need to address the following issues:

•  Development and delivery of patient focused services which optimise the use of medicines
•  Supporting patients to get the best from their medicines
•  Identification of, and challenges to, inappropriate variation in practice in medicines use
•  Ensuring safe, effective, evidence-based practice in the use of medicines by managing information overload
•  Using data sources, audit and analysis to support decision-making around medicines use
•  Reducing medication waste
•  Using medicines in line with local formularies, guidance and shared care arrangements
•  Local implementation of agreed national policy, eg NICE guidance and Better Care Better Value indicators

Balancing a prescribing budget with implementation of national and local policies and the needs of individual patients is challenging and will require the right skills and know how to ensure successful delivery.

Here at UnitedHealth UK our Medicines Management Team can support you in the delivery of your medicines management and prescribing objectives, through a new range of services and tools. You will no doubt be familiar with our current product, ScriptSwitch Prescribing Decision Support, which is already installed across 6,500 GP practices in the UK. All of the new services and tools utilise this software as the cornerstone of their application.

We understand that every commissioning organisation will have its own local challenges and priorities and may already have some existing medicines management resource available. With that in mind our products and services can be tailored and flexed to deliver the right solution to meet your local needs.

ScriptSwitch Prescribing Decision Support has saved the NHS circa £29m per annum across its existing customer base, with potential annual savings being valued at circa £190m. We believe that this is only the start. By working with you, through the provision of additional services and/or tools, we can reduce your prescribing expenditure and deliver improved patient outcomes.

The UnitedHealth UK Medicines Management Team is multidisciplinary and has been structured in such a way to provide maximum support to you, our customers. We have a team of pharmacists with a strong medicines management background who will work with you to develop your medicines management strategy and translate this into deliverables. Our pharmacists will also support you by providing any further services you may wish to commission.

ScriptSwitch Prescribing Decision Support provides you with detailed drug switch recommendations, dosage optimisation information and locally authored patient safety information messages right at the point of prescribing. ScriptSwitch can aid the prescriber’s decision with a simple information screen that appears automatically and then requires just one click to accept or decline the recommendation.

Monitor your practices’ performance and run reports within the ScriptSwitch Analytics tool.

Reviewing ‘real time’ ScriptSwitch data in detail provides intelligence that can be used to further educate prescribers, identify additional cost benefits and assist in keeping locally authored messages fresh.