Pills Reviewing medication in care homes

Pills is part of the Power of people, our award-winning series of short films about life-changing health care innovation.

Our film tells the story of how the wellbeing of older care home residents is enhanced by making sure they are only prescribed the medicine they really need, and the positive impact this has had on the people who work on the project too.

Northumbria NHS Trust’s medication review brings together care home residents, their families and health professionals to ensure residents are getting the right mix of medicines. This increases the quality of life for residents, reduces unwanted side effects as well as cutting down on the time and money wasted from unnecessary prescribing. The multi-disciplinary teams include pharmacists and GPs, and achieve deprescribing by reviewing patients' multiple medications and reducing polypharmacy effectively.

• Care homes taking part in the medication review project have reduced the amount of medicine prescribed to residents by 17%.
• For every pound invested in the review process, £2.38 has been saved in medication costs.
• It now takes nurses less time to administer medications, giving them an extra hour a day to focus on caring for residents.
• In the summer of 2015 the service was offered to an additional 3,000 care home residents across Northumberland.

In this section we look in more detail at what the medication review project achieved and how the approach is now being used more widely to improve the lives of care home residents. 

You can contact the project lead, Dr Wasim Baqir, via email wasim.baqir@nhs.net or through Twitter @nhctpharmacy or @wazzedagain