Medicines optimisation support for GP practices and PCNs
Medicines optimisation support for GP practices and PCNs
What is Medicines Optimisation?
A patient-first approach to ensure the safe and effective use of medicines for optimal care and condition management.
How Will This Help My Practice?
For medicines work across several practices, see our ICB medicines optimisation support, our clinical pharmacy service for GP federations and our clinical pharmacy for integrated neighbourhood teams.
Prepares practices for the SNF
Proactively aligning prescribing pathways ahead of national rollouts.
Maximises revenue from ICB incentive schemes
Delivering clinical work required to claim payments.
Delivers end-to-end prescribing projects
Handling time-consuming initiatives remotely, such as DOAC reviews.
Boosts QOF performance & patient outcomes
Optimising medication whilst ensuring accurate coding.
Reduces waste and unwarranted variation
Improving cost-effectiveness and medicines safety.
Simplifies repeat prescription management
Expanding electronic Repeat Dispensing (eRD) to reduce admin workloads.
“The team is consistently reliable. Phones are always answered and emails come back the same day. It’s made a real difference to how we run our medication reviews.”
“Fast email replies and clinical input whenever we need it. They picked up our medicines work seamlessly and delivered from day one.”
“Excellent service from start to finish. Easy to reach, quick to reply, and they clearly know NHS workflows inside out. We couldn’t recommend the team more highly.”
How Does Virtual Pharmacist Work?
Explore our services
Submit an enquiry
Get started
Frequently Asked Questions
What does medicines optimisation involve?
- Reviewing prescribing patterns
- Improving patient safety
- Aligning with NICE and ICB guidance
- Reducing medication waste
- Completing formulary switches
- Deprescribing where appropriate
- Ensuring correct monitoring and coding
Can the pharmacists prescribe necessary changes?
Yes. 85% of our pharmacists are independent prescribers. Within the protocol agreed with your practice, they can sign prescriptions, switch medicines, optimise doses, deprescribe, process repeat changes and move patients to safer alternatives, following NICE guidance, your ICB formulary and MHRA alerts.
Decisions outside the agreed clinical scope go to a GP. Where a change needs discussion, we contact the patient by phone or text message and update EMIS, SystmOne, Vision or Medicus.
How is this service delivered?
How do you prepare practices for the Single National Formulary (SNF)?
Medicines optimisation work we take on for GP practices and PCNs
We run medicines optimisation as defined projects inside your clinical system. You choose the priority, we agree the protocol with your clinical lead, and our clinical team works through each patient individually and codes the outcome on the record. Projects practices most often hand over:
- Formulary and cost-effective switches, including the clinical work behind ICB incentive schemes
- DOAC and anticoagulation reviews
- High-risk drug monitoring sweeps
- Polypharmacy reviews and deprescribing
- Medicines-related QOF work, coded as it is done
- Moving suitable patients onto electronic repeat dispensing
- Preparing prescribing for the Single National Formulary
How a medicines optimisation project runs
- We agree the aim, the search and the protocol with your clinical lead.
- We run the search and size the cohort, so you know the scale before work starts.
- Our pharmacists review each patient against NICE guidance, your ICB formulary and MHRA alerts.
- Changes are made within the agreed protocol, and patients are contacted by phone or text where a change needs discussion.
- You receive a report of what was reviewed, changed and passed to your GPs.
Who does the work
Reviews are carried out by GPhC-registered pharmacists, 85% of whom are independent prescribers, working under one clinical governance framework. Prescribing follows protocols agreed with the practice: our independent prescribers sign prescriptions within their competence, and anything outside it goes to the patient’s GP.
What medicines optimisation work has delivered
- A Derbyshire practice took part in an ICB scheme that pays £80 for each clinically appropriate anticoagulant switch. Of 65 patients screened, 37 were switched and the practice claimed £2,960.
- A practice of around 6,000 patients handed over its medicines-related QOF work, with around 26 indicators supported through one governed pathway across the year.
We have supported 375+ GP practices and 88+ PCNs in 23 ICB areas. Read the full case studies.
