OBJECTIVES:

The National Health Service (NHS) reimburse English pharmacies for providing Medicine Use Reviews (MURs). MURs are pharmacist-led consultations on a patient’s medicine use that aim to improve patient adherence and outcomes and reduce medicine wastage (1). MURs can be conducted in patients who have received 1+ medicine from a pharmacy for 3+ months and may be repeated annually. Pharmacies are reimbursed £28 per MUR and may claim for up to 400 MURs per financial year. While there are limited health-economic studies available relating to MURs in England, available data suggest increased patient satisfaction and cost-savings due to better disease control (1). We assessed current uptake of MURs in English community pharmacies.

METHODS:

Monthly dispensing data for English pharmacies that had (i) submitted MUR data to the NHS Prescription Services for the last financial year and (ii) made at least one MUR claim during this period were retrieved from the NHS Business Authority. This resulted in monthly data for the period 01/04/2015 to 31/03/2016 being retrieved for 10,772 pharmacies. Opportunity loss was calculated by subtracting the total number of MURs declared from the maximum each pharmacy could conduct (n=400) and multiplying the subtraction with the reimbursement tariff (£28).

RESULTS:

The median English pharmacy declared completing 96.5% of the MURs they could be have been reimbursed for, representing a median opportunity loss of £392 (£0-£11,172) per pharmacy. Total opportunity loss in England was £29,170,204. However, regional variations were observed, with total opportunity loss being highest in North East London (£1,771,868) and lowest in Bath, Gloucester, Swindon & Wiltshire (£637,112).

CONCLUSIONS:

Overall uptake of MURs was high although regional variances were observed. More studies are needed to understand reasons for regional variation and the impact on patient outcomes and indirect NHS cost.

REFERENCES:

(1) Wright (2016) https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/12/rapid-evdnc-rev-dec-16.pdf