About Surplusmed

The NHS estimated total spend on medicines in England was approximately £17.4 billion in 2016/17, with the average cost of medicines increasing by 12% year on year since 2010/11. Hospitals account for nearly half of the total NHS spending on medicines, and are estimated to waste approximately £300 million per year, of which at least a 1/3 is due to expired or excess medicines.

Medicines are the most common intervention in healthcare and play a crucial role in maintaining health, preventing illness, managing chronic conditions and curing disease. Optimising medicine use is becoming increasingly important for both patients and the National Health Service (NHS), with key Health Service targets being to improve patient outcomes, maximise drug safety, and reduce wastage.

The problem of prescription medicine waste is already well established, with research highlighting a number of factors contributing to the problem, including expired medicines, poor adherence to medicine regimens, sub-optimal prescribing, discontinued medicines, illness recovery, care system failures and patient death.

Furthermore, it has already been identified that drugs are often prescribed inappropriately by clinicians, and pharmacists asking the clinicians to make changes to the prescription as appropriate.

The National Health Service (NHS), like all other public sector organisations, has a responsibility to cut waste and increase efficiency.  There is an increasing concern at the amount and the cost of prescribed medicines that are wasted and then have to be disposed of.  Every penny spent on wasted medicines is money the NHS cannot spend on patient care or improving health services.  Reducing medicine wastage would help the NHS to treat more patients and fund the implementation of strategies for improving health services.

The NHS is under growing pressure to improve productivity and is expected to make £20bn of efficiency savings in the next four years. Finding innovative ways of working will be necessary to achieve this challenging target.

The School of Pharmacy, University of London and York Health Economics Consortium concluded in 2010 that the gross annual cost of NHS prescription medicines waste in England is in the region of £300 million per year.  At least 1/3 of this could be expired and excess medicines, but it is not possible to know exactly how much of the £300 million is attributed to stockholding and expired medicine.

Too much time, money and effort are being wasted on the disposal of expired medicines. Money spent on wasted medicines would be better spent on patient care and implementing new services.  Reducing medicine wastage will improve quality, save resources and allow staff to focus on roles that add value to patient care.

Many of these ‘excess’ medicines could be used in other hospitals within the NHS but previously there has not been both a reliable and easily accessible platform to facilitate this until SurplusMed.