§ Baroness Greengrossasked Her Majesty's Government:
How they are ensuring that all general practitioners meet the target of carrying out annual and six-monthly reviews of medication for people aged over 75; and what is their estimate of the percentage of general practitioners that meet this target. [HL894]
§ Lord WarnerThe National Service Framework (NSF) for Older People requires medication reviews to be carried out for all people over 75 years at least once a year and those taking more than four or more medicines to have a review every six months. It is for strategic health authorities to monitor progress against delivery of the NSF milestones. The Department of Health does not collect data centrally on the percentage of general practitioners meeting the NSF target.
20WAHowever, the National Medicines Management collaborative hosted by the National Prescribing Centre has demonstrated significant progress on medication reviews. Currently they have three waves in operation. For the first wave, the overall percentage of patients with a documented review for patients 65 years and over on four or more medicines rose from 9 per cent to 32 per cent. For the second wave, which covers 200 GP practices in 40 primary care trusts (PCTs), this figure increased from 28 per cent in June 2002 to 47 per cent by September 2003. For Wave 3, for the same number of practices, the number of reviews increased from 29 per cent in January 2003 to 50 per cent in September 2003.
Many PCTs that are not part of the collaborative have also implemented the national service framework milestone on medication reviews by supporting community pharmacists in delivering medicines management to older people.
The Medicines Partnership Taskforce funded by Department of Health will be surveying PCTs to explore the extent to which medication reviews are being carried out early in 2004.
The quality indicators for the new GP contract will require them to carry out medication reviews for patients being prescribed four or more repeat medicines every 15 months which will be recorded in the patients' notes from next April.
In the government statement of 17 July 2003 on the proposed framework for a new community pharmacy contract, it was highlighted that medicines use review was expected to form one of the enhanced services normally provided by accredited pharmacists from April 2004.
All of the above initiatives should help to ensure that medication reviews for older people are carried out as required by the NSF for Older People.