Medicine safety & optimisation

Improving Repeat Prescribing

Photo of pharmacist and female customer looking at medicine bottle in a pharmacy

Millions of patients in England receive their medicines through repeat prescriptions. This helps to ensure they have safe and timely access to necessary medicines. However, recent research and patient feedback indicate not all patients are receiving regular reviews of their long-term medicine usage. As a result, patients may be exposed to harm due to lack of monitoring or review of their repeat prescriptions.

Helping practices adopt the Repeat Prescribing Toolkit for smarter, safer care

We are helping our local health systems implement a Repeat Prescribing Toolkit, which drives safer and more efficient patient care. The toolkit provides guidance and training resources to help practices enhance the consistency of their repeat prescribing processes. It is the first national good practice guidance in twenty years and was developed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Royal College of General Practitioners.
We recently hosted three workshops to introduce the toolkit to practices and PCNs across Kent, Surrey and Sussex. These outline how the toolkit was developed and how it helps practices review and streamline their repeat prescribing processes.
Each ICB is taking a slightly different approach to rolling out the toolkit. NHS Sussex and Surrey Heartlands are including it as part of this year’s prescribing scheme, while Kent and Medway is initially using it to provide more direct support to a PCN. We are helping our partners with project management and training to start using the toolkit, as well as developing its spread across the wider system.

Resources

Repeat Prescribing Toolkit workshop recording

Introducing the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) and Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) endorsed Repeat Prescribing Toolkit to practices and PCNs.

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Repeat Prescribing Toolkit FAQs

Everything you need to know about using the Repeat Prescribing Toolkit.

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Structured Medication Reviews

A range of evidence-based resources to support and help prepare people who have been invited for a Structured Medication Review with their GP, pharmacist or other healthcare professional.

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Reducing medicines waste

An estimated £300 million of NHS prescribed medicines are wasted each year. NHS Dorset’s Medicines Optimisation Team has kindly shared these patient-focused posters and digital graphics to be adapted for your use.

Only order what you need – desktop and GP screen

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Only order what you need – graphic for emails

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Only order what you need – A5 flyer

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Only order what you need – A4 poster

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Contact us

If you’d like to find out more about our improving repeat prescribing programme or any of our other medicine safety and optimisation programmes, get in touch.

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