HIGHBRIDGE Medical Centre has changed the way patients order prescriptions in effort to crackdown on overspending on unused medicines.

The medical centre on Pepperall Road has an annual overspend of up to £200,000 which is caused in part by drugs wastage and over-ordering by patients.

In a bid to stop the wastage, the centre has re-introduced an old patient initiated prescription request system which means only patients at the surgery can request their prescriptions.

Dr Harvey Sampson, clinical lead at Highbridge Medical Centre, said he hopes the new system will help reduce drug waste at the surgery.

"We currently have a quite significant overspend on our prescribing budget and one of the main contributors to this is drug wastage and inadvertent over-ordering by patients, resulting in drug waste," Dr Sampson said.

"To try and combat this we have changed the way patients can order their prescriptions.

"Up until the start of May we have had a system whereby the pharmacies order on behalf of their patients and, although extremely convenient for patients, this has led to multiple instances of drugs being ordered unnecessarily."

Dr Sampson said staff at the surgery recently found a hoard of prescription drugs at a patient's house which had accumulated over a number of months and said it cost the surgery thousands of pounds of their drug budget.

He said the problem is not unique to Highbridge Medical Centre saying that other centres across the county are also dealing with overspends.

"We have had numerous meetings internally and with the pharmacies, and have agreed to revert to patient-initiated prescription requests only," Dr Sampson said.

"This was the system at Highbridge up until a few years ago, and is still the preferred system for the majority of practices in Somerset."

"I do think this will have benefits, both in cutting down on drug wastage and also encouraging patient engagement and understanding of their own health conditions, and in particular understanding a little more regarding the medicines that they take."