The NHS Business Services Authority (BSA) Polypharmacy Prescribing Comparators help Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and General Practices identify patients most likely to be exposed to the risks associated with taking multiple medicines or certain combinations of medicines.
Why are we doing in?
The NHS BSA Polypharmacy prescribing comparators are available to all CCGs and GP practices in England. The comparators enable GP practices and CCGs to;
Our data shows that, where used to full effect, CCGs and Practices are able to reduce the rate of polypharmacy in patients at greatest risk.
What’s happening in Wessex?
Wessex AHSN (on behalf of the AHSN Network) led the work to develop the NHS BSA Polypharmacy Prescribing Comparators and are the official custodian of the work. It steers the Polypharmacy Prescribing Comparators working group which meets quarterly to advance work in this area and develop more comparators for publication and use.
Since their official launch in 2017, WAHSN has supported CCGs and GP Practices in their adoption and spread. WAHSN has also started to provide GP Practices with individualised reports through the Active Learning Sets. These ‘data packs’ help GP Practices to identify areas to prioritise but also encourage conversations around how they are doing compared to their peers. These reports and engagement around the Comparators help WAHSN ‘start a conversation’ in a safe sharing environment.
Through this engagement locally WAHSN was able to further identify that GPs' need support in better understanding high-risk medications and their risk in the elderly. This has helped develop e-learning modules on University Hospital Southampton’s Medicines Information e-learning portal with an Anticholinergic module under development.
We are also very pleased to say that comparators won a prestigious national HSJ Award in November 2019. Read all about it here.
For information on the Polypharmacy Action Learning Sets see here.
