PSNC urges pharmacists to ‘rise to the challenge’ of diabetes

PSNC has said that pharmacists are "ideally placed to rise to the challenge" of diabetes as prescriptions numbers for the condition soared to more than 40 million.

With prescription numbers doubling in a six-year period and an increasing focus on prevention and helping patients to manage their own conditions, "tailor-made" pharmacy public health services could help patients to do this and relieve pressure on NHS resources, PSNC said.

Growing cost: prescriptions for diabetes-related drugs passed 40m in 2010-11

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The comments came as 2011-12 NHS figures revealed that diabetes prescription items dispensed in the community in England topped 40 million in a year for the first time. The number of prescriptions and the net cost of diabetes drugs have both increased by almost 50 per cent in the past six years, outstripping overall growth in the number of prescriptions across the NHS, which rose by 33 per cent in the same period. The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) figures further confirmed the "full and somewhat concerning picture of the increasing impact" of diabetes, said HSCIC chief executive Tim Straughan. "Diabetes is having a growing impact on prescribing in a very obvious way – from the amount of prescriptions dispensed to patients in primary care to the annual drugs bill costs to the NHS."

PSNC head of NHS services Alastair Buxton said the designation of diabetes as a target condition in the new medicine service was an example of how community pharmacy was "ideally placed to rise to this challenge".
 
"Pharmacies have services tailor-made to provide public health advice that can help to stem the rise in problems like diabetes, to ensure that patients get the most out of their medicines, and that they are able to manage their conditions in the community, relieving pressure on waiting lists and NHS resources," he said.

Since 2007-08, diabetes drugs have accounted for the highest cost of any of the sections of prescribed drugs listed by the British National Formulary. While the overall cost of all drugs to the NHS fell last year by just over 1 per cent, the diabetes drugs bill increased by almost 5 per cent to £760.3 million, the HSCIC said.