General Practitioner with expertise in asthma and experience as expert witness in asthma deaths- available for consultancy on systems for reducing unscheduled asthma care
Prescribing costs are analysed by NHS managers in isolation of associated healthcare costs. So GPs are incentivised to prescribe cheaply. In asthma where short acting beta-2- bronchodilators (SABAs) are prescribed in excess, and at risk for patients, the costs increase exponentially with increased numbers of these SABAs per year. We analysed the costs in two published papers and present them in an easy to understand infographic- hopefully health care managers will now actively discourage excess SABAs and favour Inhaled Corticosteroids for all people with asthma - either as needed with formoterol or as part of a MART regime as per www.ginasthma.org. Asthma: effect of excess short-acting β2-agonist (SABA) inhaler prescriptions on healthcare resource utilisation https://lnkd.in/eZ6cAPsj
The NHS fails to consder lifetime costs of treatment of asthma when it disallows preventive treatment such as sublingual immuntherapy in predisposed allergic children
It would also help if all the costs were seen at point of prescribing e.g. more than 6 SABAs in a year for a child = how many acute attendances at secondary care & potentially PICU admissions or worse as you & others have pointed out over many years & the NRAD report still being largely ignored
I work in primary care a totally agree with this. Often repeats are managed by reception staff who do not have the knowledge or understanding of the medication when clicking issue and often ignor issue limits.
Poorly controlled asthma is expensive. It is costly in terms of quality of life, productivity, relationships and achievement to the patient and society and in unplanned attendances at GP surgeries and A&E. And what price do you put on an avoidable asthma death
A very useful infographic, thank you for sharing Mark Levy
Experienced Pharmaceutical Professional
7moThat’s a fabulous opening statement that explains decades of ineffective prescribing in many treatment areas. Given policy makers now seem to accept that the NHS is broken and largely through ill thought through management policies, let’s give clinicians greater control and responsibility for budget and policy and we may just see budget allocations align with outcomes.