Wasted medicines cost NHS in Lincolnshire £5million

WASTED pills and medicines cost the NHS in Lincolnshire alone £5m a year, health bosses say.

This is enough money to pay for 1,000 hip replacements, 700 heart by-pass operations, 7,000 cataract operations or 900 knee replacements.

The budget for prescription medicines comes out of Lincolnshire Primary Care Trust's £1bn annual budget to cover all community and hospital services.

This week, the PCT is launching a campaign to try to stop people 'over ordering' repeat prescriptions when a patient already has a plentiful supply in the bathroom cabinet or no longer needs the medicine.

The trust's head of prescribing and medicines management, Stephen Gibson, said: “As medicines become an increasingly important part of both preventative medicine and treatment, more and more patients are receiving prescribed medicines on the NHS.

“This is, in turn, driving up levels of waste.

“Our main message to Lincolnshire patients is 'only order what you need'.”

While only one in five prescriptions are paid for at a cost of £7.10 each, even those who pay for prescriptions can be guilty of wastage with many medicines costing far more than what the NHS charges the patient.

Carole Roberts, a pharmacist at FP Watson Ltd chemist on Bailgate, Lincoln, said: “Some people and especially the elderly often store medicines like squirrels.”

To find out more about the wasted drugs see Tuesday's Lincolnshire Echo.