Case Studies

Medicines Industry Partnership Programme

26th Sept 2025

NHS Spend on prescribing is £18.5 billion per year with around an 8% annual growth. Medicines optimisation supports patients achieve the best outcomes with their medicines and best value for the NHS. We recognised that there can be a disconnect between 3rd party companies doing Medicines Optimisation work and the NHS. We think we can solve it through the Medicines Industry Partnership Programme (MIPP). This new NHS ML medicines optimisation innovative service supports GP practices by providing pharmacist-led medication reviews. These reviews improve outcomes by reducing prescribing costs, enhancing prescribing quality, optimising treatments, and aligning with local formularies

National Digital Medicines Support

26th Sept 2025

NHS England commissioned CSUs to support the Digital medicines programme. NHS Midlands and Lancashire (NHS ML) were the lead CSU. Support was developed over 6 months

Economic Analysis of Community Pharmacy for NHS England

26th Sept 2025

NHS England’s vision is for the community pharmacy sector to play an increased role in the delivery of integrated primary care services to support access challenges in primary care. It is expected this will help to release capacity in the wider NHS to address more acute and complex health conditions

NHS Supporting Early Diagnosis of Cancer (Community Pharmacy) Pilot

26th Sept 2025

Early diagnosis is key to improving patient outcomes for cancer. The NHS Long Term Plan set out an ambition that, by 2028, 75% of cancer patients should have their cancer diagnosed at stages 1 and 2. 

Medicines Optimisation Advisory Service to support NHS England North-West Health & Justice Team

26th Sept 2025

The North-West (NW) Health & Justice team asked Midlands and Lancashire CSU (NHSML) to support three key workstreams over a two-year contract, one of the workstreams was an advisory Medicine Optimisation service.

Enabling Digital Prescribing in Secure Environments: Exploring Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions (ETP) Model for Health & Justice

26th Sept 2025

Electronic prescribing and transmission models are widely adopted in NHS settings, but secure environments remain reliant on manual, paper-based workflows requiring wet signatures. This leads to operational inefficiencies, delays in patient access to medication, and increased risk of transcription errors. Schedule 2 & 3 Controlled Drugs cannot currently be prescribed electronically under UK legislation, requiring physical signed copies to be posted or delivered to pharmacies

Community Pharmacy Independent Prescribing Pathfinder Programme

30th Jun 2025

In 2023, Pharmacy First was launched in Community Pharmacy as part of a wider strategy in England to increase primary care access for patients. A shift to more clinical services is often hampered by the limited mechanisms for how patients can access medicines. Enabling independent prescribing will allow further clinical services from community pharmacy. The changes in pharmacist education and training will mean that all new pharmacists leaving university will have independent prescribing capability from 2025. NHS England has implemented a pathfinder programme to develop a commissioning framework for Independent Prescribing in future clinical services from community pharmacy. NHS England commissioned NHS Midlands and Lancashire (NHSML) to support the programme operationally from September 1, 2023, to November 31, 2025, to develop a national dashboard and a standalone cardiovascular disease lipids management dashboard for data analysis to inform a national commissioning model.

Supporting the Delivery and Evaluation of NHS Pharmacy Contraception Pilots

30th Jun 2025

As part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) 2019-2024 a range of prevention services were tested within community pharmacy. The routine monitoring of patients taking oral contraception was flagged as a prevention service and a pilot to test the model was developed. The aim of the pilot was to determine if additional capacity could be created to provide improved access to contraception services for patients. The pilot was composed of two tiers: Tier 1: the ongoing monitoring and management of repeat oral contraception prescriptions Tier 2: the initiation of oral contraception via patient group directions.

Community Pharmacy Independent Prescribing Pathfinder Programme (CPIPPP) – Formative Evaluation

30th Jun 2025

Pharmacists have been practicing as independent prescribers since 2006, mainly working in hospital, general practice or other primary care settings. This programme explores how pharmacists can practice as an NHS independent prescriber within the community pharmacy sector. This is important because all pharmacists from 2025 onwards will graduate as qualified independent prescribers therefore improving prescribing capacity within the workforce.

NHS England Advanced Community Pharmacy Smoking Cessation Service - Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (October 2022 – January 2023)

28th Aug 2024

NHS England (NHSE) wanted to implement an adapted Ottawa Model of Smoking Cessation in secondary care trusts in England enabling patients to receive inpatient smoking cessation treatment and support as part of routine care.  NHSE commissioned NHS Midlands & Lancashire to support implementation by working with various stakeholders within secondary care, primary care & local authority (this case study highlights implementation in Wolverhampton).

Stopping over medication of people with a learning disability, autism or both (STOMP)

8th Aug 2024

In a collaboration between NHS England’s Specialist Pharmacy Service and NHS Midlands and Lancashire CSU set out to address the over medication of people with a learning disability, autism or both.

Increasing patient referrals into the National Diabetes Prevention Programme

7th Aug 2024

Between June 2021 and March 2023, NHS Midlands and Lancashire CSU (MLCSU) were commissioned by the Black Country and West Birmingham CCG (subsequently the Black Country ICS) to support GP practices increase referrals into the National Diabetes Prevention Programme (NDPP).

Preventing cardiovascular diseases through lipid therapy modification

7th Aug 2024

Lakeside Healthcare Group, a multi-site GP partnership in Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, secured funding to review more than 1,000 at-risk patients for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD). They asked NHS Midlands and Lancashire CSU (MLCSU) to identify high-risk patients, offer lifestyle advice, and undertake remote clinical reviews to optimise their lipid therapy using NICE-approved pathways.

Wirral Medicines Optimisation in Care Homes (MOCH) project​ ​

5th Aug 2024

Nationally care home residents take an average of 7 medicines each day. With each additional medicine comes an increased risk of prescribing, monitoring, dispensing and administration errors, adverse drug reactions, impaired medicines adherence and compromised quality of life for patients.

Cheshire and Merseyside Formulary Harmonisation

17th Jul 2024

With the advent of the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board (ICB), there was a need to harmonise the legacy Cheshire and legacy Merseyside formularies. ​ ML Medicines Optimisation Team provides the secretariat for the newly established Cheshire and Merseyside Area Prescribing Group (CMAPG) and the five subgroups that feed into the APG. Previously, ML has provided the secretariat for the Pan Mersey Area Prescribing Committee and subgroups. ​ ML develop a project group with NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB and aligned five pharmacists from the ML team to support the harmonisation project.

NHS ML Prescription Ordering Direct Service

17th Jul 2024

A Prescription Ordering Direct (POD) service was established for Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent Integrated Care Board. A responsive, patient-centred POD service can reduce prescription costs, reduce prescription waste and improve medicines safety. A POD service can save valuable NHS funds by reducing GP workloads, thus improving access to clinicians and allowing them to devote more time to complex patient needs.

Scaling non-medical prescribing services for enhanced patient care

25th Apr 2024

Our Medicines Management Optimisation team has improved patient care by improving processes and automating tasks to ensure timely access to medications and maintain safety through competency assessments among healthcare professionals.

Inhaler prescribing errors: Identifying risks and improving patient safety

28th Sept 2023

Inhaler prescribing errors are frequently overlooked, leading to duplicate inhaler ingredients from the same drug group being prescribed and an increased risk of adverse effects for the patient.

Improving the safety of patients prescribed clozapine

28th Sept 2023

NHS Midlands and Lancashire CSU’s Medicines Management and Optimisation Team collaborated with a local mental health trust to address the issue of inadequate documentation of clozapine, a high-risk medication, in primary care patient medication records.

Empowering people living with pain to explore alternatives

20th Dec 2022

Flippin’ Pain is a public health campaign that engages with individuals and communities affected by persistent pain and empowers them through a better understanding. This is essential to delivering change in the approach to pain management across whole systems.

Improving quality of care in a nursing home through medicines management

22nd Nov 2022

Having identified medicines-related issues at a nursing home, colleagues from Lancashire County Council requested support from MLCSU’s Medicine Optimisation Care Home (MOCH) team.

Improving high-dose opioid prescribing

7th Oct 2022

There is no evidence for efficacy of high dose opioids (>120mg/day morphine equivalent) in long-term pain. The Faculty of Pain Medicine has advised that increasing opioid load above this dose is unlikely to yield further benefits but exposes the patient to increased harm Opioids Aware | Faculty of Pain Medicine (fpm.ac.uk).

Black Country Integrated Medicines Optimisation Committee

7th Oct 2022

Integrated care systems (ICSs) are bringing major changes in how health and care services are planned, paid for and delivered. The Black Country ICS has been setting up an Integrated Medicines Optimisation Committee (IMOC) to foster partnerships and optimise the use of medicines across the system.

Success in setting up community pharmacy services

25th May 2022

The Birmingham and Black Country Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) requested our help with managing locally commissioned community pharmacy services. Several schemes were prioritised: Pharmacy First, COVID-19 Urgent Eye Care service, Specialist Palliative Care Drugs service and the Intravenous Antibiotic Supply service.