NHS England has recently launched a new programme of National Medicines Optimisation Opportunities for 2023/24. The guidance outlines 16 key areas of focus, including:
- addressing problematic polypharmacy
- improving respiratory outcomes while reducing the carbon emissions from inhalers
- recuing course length of antibiotic prescribing.
Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) are advised to select at least five to implement alongside their local priorities.
The OpenPrescribing team have created a Medicines Optimisation dashboard which provides data at practice, PCN, ICB and NHS England regional level. This will help inform local discussions about how to best select and address the opportunities set out by NHS England. You can read more about the dashboard and how to use it in the blog.
Visit resource
The two antibiotic medicines optimisation opportunities are IV to oral switch of antibiotics expressed as a percentage in hospitals, and reducing course lengths of oral antibiotics from 7 to 5 days of amoxicillin where NICE recommend a range. The latter has been expanded to doxycycline, flucloxacillin, penicillin V, clarithromycin and co-amoxiclav.
The National Med Op Dashboard is via NHSBSA ePACT, but there are many open access resources for shorter durations https://www.prescqipp.info/our-resources/webkits/antimicrobial-stewards… and from Open Prescribing https://openprescribing.net/national/england/?tags=antimicrobial Future NHS AMR workspace (NHS email to register) has the IV to oral switch CQUINs and resources. https://future.nhs.uk/A_M_R/view?objectID=32809584
Sadly there is no agreed carbon values for antibiotics, though a methods paper has been published, but the values have not been shared, so practically cannot be used https://bpspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bcp.16229
Please log in or sign up to comment.