Reducing Medicines Waste

Tracy Lyons, Medicines Sustainability Lead at NHS Dorset describes the Dorset ICB “Only order what you need” campaign.

This multi-modal, multi-partner campaign was designed to empower patients to confidently decline a repeat order of medications if they had sufficient stock at home. Within two months, the campaign resulted in a 2% drop in prescription requests across Dorset.

It is calculated that 65,000 prescription items were not requested because of the campaign and using data from EPACT2, the associated savings were £475,000 in avoided prescription costs, and 294,975 kg of carbon emissions (CO2e).