title: Medicines management. A tension seeker.
abstract: Tensions exist across the primary-secondary care interface between GPs and hospital prescribing services. Repeat prescribing arrangements are a good focus for audit, as a patient started by the hospital on a treatment will tend to stay on it after discharge, with knock-on costs for primary care. Cost-effectiveness improvements in prescribing practice have included a significant reduction in hospital prescribing of 'loss-led' oral nitrates in favour of generic equivalents and the adoption as standard of the most cost-effective of the new proton pump inhibitors.
authors.affiliation: Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Royal Hospital Trust.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shepherd
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ayyash
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Burrill
mesh_terms: D003266:Continuity of Patient Care; D011307:Drug Prescriptions; D004739:England; D005194:Family Practice; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008485:Medical Audit; D010607:Pharmacy Service, Hospital / Q000592:standards*; D010606:Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee; D010865:Pilot Projects; D013222:State Medicine