Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) need to be better at forecasting which drugs GPs are prescribing in order to help reduce medicine shortages, NHS Alliance chair and GP Mike Dixon has said.

Dr Dixon suggested CCGs use prescribing advisers – pharmacists or technicians who are employed by PCTs to encourage appropriate prescribing – to help GPs prescribe medicines more rationally. This would make it easier for wholesalers to predict which medicines would be ordered and ensure that they had enough in stock, he told the annual conference of the British Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers (BAPW) on Tuesday (June 18).

"You need a predictable system in terms of knowing what commissioners are going to prescribe," Dr Dixon said. "In the surgery there's nothing more irritating than getting a call from the pharmacy saying ‘we've run out of canestan' or something really ordinary. It's a problem we never used to have in the old days."

"There's nothing more irritating than getting a call from the pharmacy saying ‘we've run out of canestan' or something really ordinary. It's a problem we never used to have in the old days" Mike Dixon, NHS Alliance	More on stock shortages European wholesalers join calls for obligation to       tackle UK shortages Government group tried to gag shortages report Wholesalers' ground rules on stock shortages       receive lukewarm response MORE NEWS
	GPs have to prescribe an alternative medicine, which often confuses the patient about which medicine they are meant to be taking, he added. One in four pharmacists had to ask their GP to change a prescription more than 30 times last year because of problems sourcing a drug, the C+D Stock Survey 2012 revealed.

Dr Dixon's suggestion was an "interesting local solution", but, even if CCGs were able to forecast GP prescribing to "within a tablet", it would not end shortages, said Dispensing Doctors Association chief executive Matthew Isom, who attended the conference.

Predicting prescribing levels would help control drug budgets in some areas, but would not prevent medicines being exported, he told C+D.

Health Committee chair Stephen Dorrell MP told the conference that a pharmacist or wholesaler who exported medicines was not valuing the relationship with their GP or patients.

"It seems to me there are some challenges and questions for the pharmacy profession as well. Simply to say ‘the price is better in Germany' isn't a complete answer," he said.

Earlier this month, European wholesalers backed a call by the BAPW for a patient service obligation to be put in place to tackle medicines shortages.

C+D has launched a petition as part of its Sort Out Stocks campaign, calling for the government to accept that prescription medicine shortages are still a problem for both pharmacists and patients in the UK. Pharmacists can back the campaign and sign the petition here.