ARC research heads to Westminster to talk about the challenges of over-prescribing medicines.

In England more than 1 million people are taking 10 or more medicines, many of those – over half – are aged over 75. Over a billion medicines are prescribed a year and it’s estimated that 10% of those are not necessary.

Over-prescribing can lead to problems like falls, confusion and loss of independence particularly for those older people who are frail. It is estimated that harms from medications cost the NHS in England up to £2.2 billion a year.

Dr’s Kinda Ibrahim, Eloise Radcliffe and Sara McKelvie from the University of Southampton have been carrying out research looking at how to safely reduce unnecessary medications or harmful medications for vulnerable groups like people with dementia or those that are frail.

The three projects have been funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) School of Primary Care Research and the Wessex based Applied Research Collaboration (NIHR ARC Wessex). Spider, Stop-Dem and Modify have been running for 4 years with a team based in Southampton.

The team produced a Policy brief to explain the benefits and savings possible through safely de-prescribing medicines with a health professional. What’s called a structured medicine review.

They met MPs and the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for NHS England, and key representatives from the Royal College of General Practitioners, the National Academy for Social Prescribing, the British Geriatric Society and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in a specially arranged meeting in Westminster to explain how much of a difference their research findings could make to the lives of patients and the NHS.

Kinda said: “It was such a great day discussing our research on medicine optimisation and deprescribing work with MPs and key policy makers at Westminster. I left the meeting with lots of ideas and new direction for future research. Huge thanks to all attended for giving us their time and input.”

The work of de-prescribing for people with dementia has been made into a short film which you can see here.

The meeting was made possible by the Head of Public Policy at the University of Southampton Gareth Giles.

The Policy brief created by the researchers and Public Policy team made 4 recommendations:

1. Fund training and support for health professionals in primary care to have regular medicine reviews in a face-to-face meeting with patients.
   

2. Involve social prescribing workers to provide alternatives to medicines.
   

3. Target support and funding to poorer areas to help people who are more vulnerable.
   

4. Launch a national campaign advising patients that they can work with their health care professional to look at what medicines they really need, whether any medicines may be causing more harm than good, and what alternatives there are.

Dr Eloise Radcliffe said: “Medicines reviews should be approached as an on-going process, with de-prescribing recognised as a core element, with clear follow-up support in place.”