Stopping one thing at a time

Gerald Okpara’s list went from thirteen to nine over nine months, which sounds fast and was in fact deliberately, almost tediously slow.

Roughly one in six calls finds a duplication — the same drug arriving under two names from two prescribers who were each entirely correct.

What the call found

The pharmacist has prescribing rights in this service, which removes a referral step that used to add three weeks to every change.

Stopping four things at once tells you nothing about which one mattered. So we stop one.

Samuel Reyes, clinical pharmacy

A year of fewer things

Reviews are booked annually and attended jointly with whoever manages the person’s medicines at home, which is frequently not the person themselves.

Two agents came back. “That isn’t failure,” he says. “That’s how we found out they were doing something.”