£3m WASTED ON UNWANTED MEDICINES IN CUMBRIA
30th July 2010
Almost three million pounds a year is wasted in Cumbria by people asking for a prescription or a repeat of one that they don't need.
Health bosses think around 13 tonnes of medication has been returned and destroyed.
NHS Cumbria are now asking people to stoop and think before ordering more drugs.
The money spent on buying unneeded prescriptions in Cumbria is equivalent to the salaries of 140 nurses for one year.
Doctors’ surgeries in the county now have medicines managers who are there to help make sure patients get the right medicines in the right quantities.
Since their introduction eight years ago, they’ve helped GPs turn the county around from being one of the most costly areas in terms of drugs cost per patient to one of the best in the North of England.
Despite this, millions of pounds are still wasted each year, prompting GPs to appeal to patients to play their part in reducing the wasted medicines mountain.
Dr Peter Weaving is a family doctor and one of NHS Cumbria's lead GPs. He said: "The message is simple: don't waste prescription medication. Although many people either pay a set price for their prescriptions or in some cases get it free, it does have a real cost to the NHS.
"If you're not well and you think you have something minor like a cold, a sore throat or a stomach upset you should get an over the counter remedy from your local chemist. There is no need to go to your doctor to get a prescription.
"Also if you have a long term condition and you’ve been prescribed medication and advised to take it regularly then please don’t stop. If you do not understand why you are taking the medication, or you think you may no longer need it, please speak to your doctor of pharmacist, don’t stockpile it.
"Stockpiling prescription medication can often lead to people either forgetting where they put it and thereby ordering more, or ending up with some going out of date.
"A spare few asthma inhalers cluttering up your drawers or some unopened steroid cream for a rash that's long disappeared all adds up, particularly when three quarters of prescriptions in Cumbria are repeat.
"Around nine in ten prescriptions in the county are issued free of charge. But even people who do pay for the £7.20 charge, are often hardly scratching the surface in terms of the real cost, which can run into hundreds of pounds per prescription.
"Although the NHS is not seeing the drastic funding reductions that other public sector agencies face, we do need to be as efficient as we can be and wasting money like this is simply not acceptable.
"When it comes to ensuring we have a well resourced health service that is there when we need it, we are all have a part to play.
"Stop and think before ordering more prescription medication than you need."
