From 30 June 2022, this website will not be updated

For the latest local health and care information, visit the Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB) website.

From 1 July 2022, Clinical Commissioning Groups will cease to exist.

Commissioning functions and information that has previously been held by West Essex CCG is transferring to the new NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB. Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB will become the new data controller. Contact us if you have any questions about the use of data (including patient data) by the new ICB. There are no changes to how you access NHS frontline services in west Essex as part of these changes.

Medicines Optimisation and Pharmacy

Delivering medicines for a healthy future

As your medicines team, our aim is to ensure that patients within west Essex get the medicines they need to achieve the greatest health outcomes for both the individual and the local community within the resources available. The NHS spends £11 billion per year on drugs and 90% of this spend takes place in general practice. Therefore as your local commissioning group we will use our experience and knowledge of ‘medicines optimisation’ to ensure the legal, safe, cost effective and best value use of medicines to meet our local health needs. Prescribing is the most common therapeutic intervention which takes place in the NHS and primary care medicines usage quite rightly has increased by 50% over the last 15 years. Good effective prescribing within west Essex can:

  • Improve primary prevention, for example, controlling blood pressure and cholesterol can prevent patients from having heart attacks and strokes which keeps the population healthy in future years reducing medical, economic and social burdens.
  • Improve secondary prevention, for example, appropriate prescribing for various chronic diseases such as diabetes, respiratory, cardiovascular and many more will prevent our local population from having further disease progression, keeping them healthier, mobile, independent and allowing them to continue to contribute to our local society.

Therefore as your local medicines team we believe it is essential to ensure that we deliver the right medicines to the right local people to give them a healthy future. All new drugs which come onto the market and have been appraised by NICE will pass through a transparent and due process and be made available to those who will benefit most from them in our local community.

Did you know?

It is estimated that up to £150 million worth of medicines is wasted every year unnecessarily within the NHS. Up to 50% of patients do not take the medicines they have been prescribed.

As your medicines team we would like to tackle these issues and ensure that we get the most out of our local budget. We are a proactive, dynamic team working across the west Essex Clinical Commissioning Group boundaries, with local pharmacists and other organisations.

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