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Everyday Medicines Programme
Welcome to the everydaymedicines.com website. This site provides information on a range of commonly prescribed medicines and the medical conditions they treat.
This AstraZeneca programme has been designed to extend care and support beyond the GP’s surgery. Everyday Medicines aims to help patients better understand their condition and their treatment. This will help increase the number of patients taking their medicines as prescribed and create a Win-Win-Win situation for all concerned: the patient, their GP and the PCT.
In the year to March 2006, prescription volume increased by 6.0% to more than 722 million items*. However, recent estimates put the amount effectively lost to the NHS in England and Wales each year due to patients not understanding how to take their medicines properly, or by not taking the full course of the medicines prescribed to them, at around £4 billion** – this is five times the NHS overspend and 5% of the total NHS budget.
However, the impact of non-compliance is not simply financial, it also affects health outcomes.
Patients who fail to complete their prescriptions, or who do not understand how to take their medicine, do not receive the full therapeutic benefit of the treatment prescribed. The knock-on effect is that many patients either pay a return visit to their GP for the same condition, or end up making a new appointment for a more serious medical condition that has arisen from not fully treating the original condition.
Everyday Medicines will initially focus on the cardiovascular, gastroenterology and respiratory therapeutic areas, and provide GPs with a set of handy referral cards that they can give to patients when they prescribe one of five AstraZeneca medicines. Log in and click on 'Request referral cards' to order your pack.
These cards direct the patient to a password-protected web site – which you can access from the brands section of this web site. Here patients can get useful information and practical advice about their diagnosed condition and the AstraZeneca medicine prescribed.
* NHS Business Services Authority Pharmaceutical Directorate report 19/05/06
** Prof Hugh McGavock on BBC Radio 4 Case Notes programme 09/05/06 |
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