PCTs are failing to capture important health needs through the present system of joint strategic needs assessments (JSNAs), LPCs have warned.

JSNAs had weaknesses and did not take into account the need for medicines support, North-East London LPC secretary Hemant Patel warned in a letter to the Department of Health (DH).

Mr Patel called on the DH to recognise the financial, logistical and health problems caused by incorrect use of prescribed drugs, including unnecessary hospital admissions.

"There are risks and needs not identified by the JSNA that contribute to an inadvertent increase in hospital admissions, treatment costs and human misery" Hemant Patel North-East London LPC

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"There are risks and needs not identified by the JSNA that contribute to an inadvertent increase in hospital admissions, treatment costs and human misery," he said, arguing that medicines safety presented a significant challenge. He suggested that clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) should appoint "medicines guardians" to ensure medicines safety, effectiveness and patient experience were taken into account. "With the increasing size of the elderly population and associated risks... there's now a need for a strategy to reduce risks and [improve] personalisation of care, particularly in the elderly and vulnerable groups," Mr Patel said.

Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham LPC agreed that medicines optimisation was a key issue in local healthcare. "If medicines aren't taken properly this will result in a lot of cases of hospitalisation and costs will go up for the NHS," said LPC secretary Jayesh Patel. "I would like to see more in the JSNA, especially around compliance and medicines not being taken."

But the disbanding of PCTs was creating uncertainty around local needs assessments, he added, because JSNAs would now be prepared by CCGs and local authorities.

And the success of these JSNAs would depend "on the right relationships", warned NHS Alliance chairman and GP Mike Dixon.

PSNC stressed that all commissioners should take into account the need for medicines services, but highlighted that PCTs' pharmaceutical needs assessments (PNAs) did identify needs for MURs and the NMS.

"JSNAs and PNAs are important tools that will be used by local authorities and commissioners to plan and develop local health services, so it is vital that LPCs and pharmacy contractors are involved to input into them during the consultation phase, if not during their development," said PSNC head of regulation Steve Lutener.

"Ensuring that local populations get the best out of the medicines they are prescribed and do not suffer ill health because they are taken incorrectly is, in our view, something that all those planning health services should be thinking about," he added.