The Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) has called for the reintroduction of the medicines use review (MUR) and for community pharmacy to be “at the heart” of tackling polypharmacy.
It said today that the sector should have a “nationally commissioned role” reviewing patients taking multiple medicines as there is an “urgent need for a systematic approach to medicines optimisation”.
The body’s call follows The Times’ investigation into polypharmacy revealing that almost eight million people in the UK take five or more medicines daily, while as many as 1,000 older patients are admitted to hospital each day following preventable adverse reactions to drugs.
Read more: ‘Medicine reviews should stay in pharmacies, not move to GP surgeries’
The IPA also said the new service should receive “dedicated funding” outside of the community pharmacy contractual framework (CPCF) global sum.
The original MUR service was decommissioned in 2021 under agreements made in the CPCF for 2019/20 to 2023/24, with NHS England finding that it “does not consider MURs to be offering good value for money”.
The IPA said community pharmacists are “medicine experts” and “uniquely placed within neighbourhoods” to support patients with medication side effects, identify drugs they no longer need to take or help them with adherence.
Read more: ‘Pharmacists should be aware of the downsides to new MUR legislation’
Community pharmacy “should be at the heart of the NHS’s response to the polypharmacy challenge”, it added.
And IPA chief executive Dr Leyla Hannbeck said the findings from The Times’ investigation “should be a wake-up call”.
She said the NHS should “properly use the expertise that already exists within community pharmacy as part of a multidisciplinary approach to tackling polypharmacy and improving patient safety”.
Read more: NPA: Give community pharmacy expanded meds optimisation role
“This cannot simply become another service that pharmacies are expected to deliver from within an already stretched global sum,” she added.
“Funding should come from outside the current CPCF global sum, recognising that a properly designed MUR service is an important patient-safety intervention that could help the NHS reduce avoidable medicines-related harm and potentially release capacity elsewhere in the system.”
“The question should not be whether we can afford to fund structured medicines reviews,” Hannbeck said. “The question is whether we can afford not to.”
Read more: RPS issues polypharmacy warning as SMRs ‘missed or de-prioritised’
It comes after the National Pharmacy Association last October called for the expansion of community pharmacy’s medicines optimisation role.
The body argued that moving some SMRs from general practice to community pharmacy could save GP practice time and reduce NHS costs and hospital admissions.
