Medicines Management Services for GP Practices and PCNs
Reduce medicines-related workload and give your GPs more time for patients with a managed Medicines Management service built around your practice or PCN.
The Medicines Management Team (TMMT) can take responsibility for agreed medicines workflows, from day-to-day prescription management and medication queries to medication reviews, medicines reconciliation, optimisation and safety work.
Rather than simply providing additional clinical capacity, we can agree the work that needs to be managed, allocate appropriately qualified pharmacy professionals and oversee delivery, escalation and ongoing performance.
Clinical Hours
GP Practices
Medication reviews completed
PCNs
Reduce the Prescription Burden on Your GPs
High volumes of acute and repeat requests, reauthorisations and medication queries can create a significant daily workload for GP practices.
TMMT can take responsibility for an agreed prescription workflow, helping reduce the amount of routine medicines-related work reaching your GPs.
Support can include acute and repeat medication requests, prescription reauthorisations, medication queries, alternative items where medicines are unavailable and appropriate requests from other healthcare professionals.
More Than Processing Requests
Our aim isn’t simply to process today’s prescription workload more quickly.
The pharmacy team can review the wider medication record and identify opportunities to improve how repeat medicines are managed, including:
- Overdue medication reviews or monitoring
- Appropriate blood tests and follow-up
- Repeat prescription optimisation
- Electronic Repeat Dispensing (eRD)
- Appropriate prescription durations
- Wider medicines optimisation opportunities
By addressing the underlying workflow, the service can help reduce unnecessary repeat work as well as releasing GP capacity.
Depending on the patient cohort and existing workflow, TMMT estimates that proactive medicines management can reduce repeat prescription workload by up to 50% through measures such as eRD, appropriate 84-day prescriptions and medication review.
What Can Our Medicines Management Service Include?
Prescription Management
Acute Support can include acute and repeat medication requests, reauthorisations, medication queries, repeat prescription optimisation and prescription issuing or signing by appropriately qualified prescribers.
Medication Reviews & Long-Term Conditions
Support can include Structured Medication Reviews, polypharmacy reviews and medication-related reviews for conditions such as hypertension, asthma, COPD, diabetes, heart failure, CKD and mental health.
Medicines Reconciliation & Optimisation
Support can include medicines reconciliation following hospital discharge, reviewing medication changes, deprescribing, medication monitoring and targeted medicines optimisation work.
Medicines Safety & CQC
Support can include high-risk drug monitoring, clinical safety searches, medicines safety alerts, audits and medicines-related SOP or protocol support.
The Right Clinical Skills for the Work
Not every medicines-management task requires the same type of clinician.
TMMT can combine independent prescribing pharmacists, clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, matching work to the qualifications, competence and scope required. The client confirms that all three can contribute to Medicines Management depending on the agreed workflow.
For example, an Independent Prescriber may manage work requiring prescription issuing and signing, while clinical pharmacists undertake wider reviews and optimisation and pharmacy technicians support appropriate reconciliation, medication-request and medicines-management workflows.
Using the right skill mix helps make effective use of your clinical capacity rather than automatically allocating every task to the most senior member of the pharmacy team.
From Medicines Workload to Managed Service
You don’t need to design the complete workflow before speaking to TMMT. We can work with your practice or PCN to establish what needs to be managed and how the service should operate.
Agree the Work
Identify the ongoing workload, backlog, patient cohort or project you want TMMT to take responsibility for.
Build the Workflow
Agree responsibilities, appropriate clinical resource, processes and escalation pathways.
Deliver
Our team completes the work within your clinical systems, escalating anything outside their competence or scope.
Monitor & Improve
Review activity, quality and efficiency and identify opportunities to improve the underlying workflow.
TMMT can take responsibility for delivery, monitoring, escalation and reporting where these form part of the service agreed at the outset.
Medicines Safety & CQC Support
TMMT can support the clinical work required to identify and address medicines-related safety issues, including high-risk drug monitoring, CQC safety searches, medicines safety alerts and appropriate clinical audits.
Support can also extend to medicines-related protocols and SOPs where required.
TMMT’s CQC lead is a former CQC inspector who provides guidance to the team and can support practices with relevant CQC requirements.
Ongoing Support or a Defined Project
Medicines Management can be commissioned around an ongoing workload or a specific requirement.
Ongoing support could cover regular prescription management, reconciliation, medication reviews, optimisation and safety monitoring.
Project support could focus on a backlog, defined patient cohort, prescribing optimisation programme, clinical audit, safety search or PCN/QOF medicines project.
In either case, we’ll agree what TMMT is responsible for and how delivery will be managed before the service begins.
Medicines Management in Practice
Colney Hatch Lane Surgery
Colney Hatch Lane Surgery needed additional clinical capacity to manage medicines-related workload while releasing GP time for more complex patient care.
TMMT provided an Advanced Clinical Pharmacist who became part of the practice team and took responsibility for work including:
- Prescription reauthorisations
- Complex medication queries
- High-risk drug monitoring
- Medicines reconciliation
- Medication reviews
The pharmacist’s wider role also included clinical triage, long-term condition management and minor illness work, so the overall results reflect the broader Advanced Clinical Pharmacist service rather than Medicines Management alone.
The Results
The case study reports that the service:
- Absorbed approximately 0.75 WTE of GP-equivalent workload
- Helped reduce routine appointment waits by 38%, from approximately three weeks to under two
- Delivered pharmacist support at approximately one-third of the salary cost of a GP
- Improved medicines safety through systematic monitoring, medication reviews and reconciliation
The example demonstrates the wider benefit of moving appropriate medicines-related work to pharmacy professionals rather than routinely relying on GP capacity.
Medicines Management FAQs
Take the Pressure Out of Medicines Management
Whether your GPs are spending too much time managing prescriptions, medication reviews are falling behind or you need additional support with medicines optimisation and safety, we’ll build the service around the work that needs to be done.
TMMT can agree the workload, provide the appropriate clinical resource and manage delivery within your existing systems and workflows.