GP practice saves £280,000 by tackling medicine over-prescribing

Tackling the over-prescribing of medicines has saved a Somerset GP practice nearly £280,000 in a year.

Frome Medical Practice was able to cut down the number of items prescribed by more than 22,000 through its Order What you Need campaign, which urged patients to check their home medication supplies and only request items they need in order to reduce medical waste.

The practice said that recent medicine checks across Somerset had revealed ‘extreme’ examples of medicine stockpiling including a patient storing 119 bottles of liquid morphine, a household with 28,520 excess doses worth almost £3,000, and 11 patients’ unused medicines producing as much CO₂ as a return flight from New York to London.

As well as saving £278,968 in prescribing costs in 2025 and reducing the number of items prescribed, the Order What you Need campaign prevented 122 tonnes of CO₂ emissions - the equivalent of driving more than 535,000 miles.

Frome Medical Practice said the money saved can be redirected into frontline NHS services.

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Karen Creffield, managing partner at the practice said the project began with a pilot of 12 patients who were referred via home visiting teams and district nurses.

'We found over £6,000 worth of stockpiled medication. This was a tipping point for change,’ she added.

‘We decided we needed to make wider system change, alongside a patient awareness campaign, so we worked closely with our local pharmacies to change the way repeat prescriptions were ordered.’

Somerset Integrated Care Board (ICB) said that across the county pharmacies dispense 30,000 prescription items each day at a cost of more than £300,000. But about 5% of these go unused or are thrown away, wasting £5 million every year in Somerset alone.

The ICB is urging the public to check their medicine cabinets, only order what they need, and return unused medicines to a pharmacy for safe disposal, with NHS England figures showing that around 10% of primary care prescriptions ‘need not have been issued’.

GPs at Frome Medical Practice, Dr Helen Kingston, Dr Neha Bhagi and Dr Angus Lean said: ‘We think our focus on preventing harm, and avoiding over medicalisation and prescribing, has really helped us to be able to see what medication is being used and not used by our patients; helping us move to a much safer space.

‘It's also about empowering patients to take control, understand their medications better and for us to facilitate those discussions.’

They said that the four pharmacists in the practice’s meds management team regularly discuss medications with patients, carry out reviews and pick up on prescriptions that are no longer needed, or are needed less.

The GPs said the effort was a ‘whole team approach’.

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‘GPs and our pharmacists carry out medicine reviews; our digital team help patients use the NHS App to order repeat medications and our GPs go out into our care homes to help review medicines for care home residents and collect no longer needed medications,’ they added.

The three doctors used the example of salbutamol inhalers being overused.

They said: ‘We don't object to people having a spare one say at work.

‘But if somebody is getting through large quantities of salbutamol, that can indicate that their asthma is badly controlled and we need to understand how their asthma is being managed and help them to improve control of their asthma.’

They said that they now carry out a ‘regular search’ of patients using more than five or six inhalers a year and use the findings to see if patients may need help to manage their asthma.

‘They're all under respiratory care and we have plans for each of those patients because [we] know that that's a genuine overuse and a problem that needs addressing,’ the GPs added.

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The Practice is also the second in England to provide ‘proxy access’ via the NHS App, enabling carers, family members or care home staff to safely order repeat prescriptions on behalf of loved ones and dramatically cutting waste and errors.

Ms Creffield said: ‘A really positive outcome has been increased use of the NHS app and [an] increase in numbers of patients with proxy access.

‘We have dedicated digital health connectors to support this. They have also been able to support patients with wider aspect[s] of digital inclusion.’