Health chiefs have promised the latest drugs and medical facilities to patients in the Highlands and Argyll and Bute, whatever the cost and despite a mounting budget crisis.
They revealed yesterday that soaring drug costs had blown a hole of almost £1million in this year’s finances.
The latest forecast suggests a £740,000 overspend on drugs by primary care and about £173,000 by hospitals.
NHS Highland chairman Garry Coutts was adamant the board would pursue its ambitions, despite a wide-ranging search for savings to balance a £573million budget.
He said: “Prescribing costs are going up because new drugs are coming on the market and we want to make sure patients get access to them. We’ve got to make provision to be able to make sure we can have them.
“Having said that, we also know there are a number of prescribers who are prescribing non-generic medicines where there are generics which are just as good.”
Mr Coutts said the board would “have to find other efficiencies elsewhere” and he was convinced “a lot of efficiencies” could be made. Commenting on the suggested reduction in the number of beds in the rheumatology unit at the Ross Memorial Hospital at Dingwall to meet part of the savings, he said: “We are examining all of our bed stock and it’s something which isn’t just a one-off exercise. It’s something we will continuously do.
“We want to make sure that patients spend as little time in hospital as possible. As we do that, we want to make sure we close beds we no longer need and invest that money in modern medicine and modern treatments.”
He insisted that the board was obliged to invest in any new licensed drug and would be “derelict in its duty” if it failed to comply.
Board colleague Michael Foxley, a Lochaber GP and leader of Highland Council, told colleagues meeting in Inverness that one way big savings could be made was to halt the practice of destroying drugs when, for example, they were returned to a pharmacy because a patient discovered the wrong quantity was issued.
The NHS in Shetland is launching a campaign to cut down on the amount of wasted medicine it hands out to patients, potentially saving itself huge sums in the process.
GPs in Shetland prescribe around £3.5million worth of drugs each year, and NHS Shetland believe that a significant percentage of that goes unused.
On Friday the health board launches a campaign to raise awareness about the cost of wasted medicine through unused repeat prescriptions or treatments cut short halfway through.
Using national estimates and the results of a local trial, which showed that £1,600 of drugs had been wasted in just three days, the board thinks it could make savings of up to £200,000 a year.
Doctors estimate that between 30% and 50% of patients do not take their medicines as prescribed because they do not think they need them, they worry about the side effects, they forget to take them, or they cut back or stop long-term treatments.