Information on Prescribing Controlled Drugs in NHS Primary Care.
A significant value of Controlled Drugs are dispensed every year within NHS Primary Care, however just how many, and who dispenses them?
Prescribing Controlled Drugs in medical environments
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Controlled drugs cabinet to store controlled drugs before prescribing them
The following information is our interpretation of information made available by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and made available in The safer management of controlled drugs annual report 2013. The information is intended for reference by Pharmacy Medical only.
Every year, prescribing controlled drugs increases within NHS primary care, whether that be volume of drugs dispensed or the value of the drugs dispensed. According to the CQC, in 2013 a similar number of controlled drugs were prescribed as in 2012, however the cost of these drugs increased by around 10 percent. Prescribing controlled drugs in NHS primary care by nurses and pharmacists is continuing to increase, however the volume prescribed by them represents a small volume of the total prescribed controlled drugs.
According to CQC data that was gathered by the CQC through monitoring the overall use and management of controlled drugs, the number of drugs dispensed in 2013 was 47,044,814 which was a 1 percent fall compared to 2012. The cost of prescribing these drugs in 2013 was £498,942,743 which is around a ten percent increase compared to £452,761,855 in 2012.
Prescribing controlled drugs by pharmacists and nurses in 2013 increased by eleven percent for nurses and sixteen percent for pharmacists in 2013. For example, in nurses prescribed 593649 controlled drugs in 2012 and 661544 in 2013, whereas pharmacists prescribed 25325 controlled drugs in 2012 and 29502 in 2013.
The figures above represent a significant number of controlled drugs being dispensed every year.
To help nurses and pharmacists in their daily job, Pharmacy Medical manufacture a wide range of controlled drugs cabinets to assist with the storage and prescribing of controlled drugs. To ensure that prescribing of controlled drugs is as easier a task as possible from our controlled drugs cabinets, Pharmacy Medical have improved their controlled drugs cabinets to incorporate new locks. Your can read more about these here.
Pharmacy Medicals new locks not only make day to day operation easier and more reliable, but they are future proof and compatible with Assa Abloys CLIQ electronic key system which helps to save valuable time, and offers an audit trail of when a cabinet was opened and by who. More information about this is available here.
