Since these prescribed items are not covered by the NHIS and hence women and their families would have to provide them from their own resources, their procurement could affect the utilisation of skilled attendance at childbirth, especially for poor women.
Over the past decade, the average number of prescribed items per person per year in England rose from 12.4 in 2002 to 18.7 in 2012; patients aged 60 years or over received half of all prescribed items [ 4].
Another change was the inclusion of the rubefacient capsaicin in the top five most frequently prescribed items for post-herpetic neuralgia, possibly because it was not licensed for neuropathic pain for all of the earlier study period and was not included in previous management recommendations.
newPIS is held by the Information Services Division ISDD), and ∼95% of prescribed items since April 2009 have a unique patient identifier attached, with data available within 8 12 weeks of a drug being prescribed (the delay being due to the pharmacy payment process).
Participants reported performing many, diverse actions during the review with the most common involving medication e.g. reviewing prescribed items, amending dosages or arranging for monitoring through further blood tests.
We determined the rate of errors on complete prescriptions as well as for individually prescribed items, giving a better estimate of the numbers of patients affected by errors.
About 75% of all prescribed items are 'repeats' [ 5], that is items issued without the patient seeing the doctor.
21 We observed a low error rate for the paediatrics specialty hospital, although this was likely due to a low number of prescribed items.
In England, 796 million prescribed items were dispensed in 2007, while 500 million items were dispensed in 1997.
Women and their families continued to make OOP payments for drugs, supplies and other prescribed items during childbirth.
