Having a practice pharmacist can reduce prescribing costs

Editor—The articles by Majeed and Head and by Greenhalgh try to identify why setting prescribing budgets for general practitioners is difficult.¹,² Both sets of authors agree that the quality and effectiveness of prescribing can be improved; such improvement would bring much greater gains than just containing the cost of prescribing in primary care—something that is exceedingly difficult to manage.

The first step in this difficult task is to control costs and keep them controlled.³ Since employing a practice pharmacist three years ago my practice has seen a continual fall in prescribing costs in relation to health authority and national averages. Latest prescribing analysis and cost (PACT) data show that the practice’s prescribing costs are 29% and 24% below these averages respectively. This represents a saving of over £200 000 annually when our costs are compared with those of an average practice of the same size (9500 patients). This achievement is possible because the practice pharmacist ensures that we pay attention to factors that lead towards rational prescribing. Unfortunately, there is little interest in the fact that we have this post: we have been unable to attract funding to establish why it is successful. Without investment in people rather than in statistics based on assumptions, the expensive activity of prescribing in primary care and concordance will remain unsolved.