If you’re prescribed a medicine to treat a long-term condition for the first time, you may be able to get some advice about your medicine from your pharmacist through a free scheme called the New Medicine Service (NMS).

Patients often have problems when they start a new medicine. As part of the scheme, the pharmacist will support you over a few weeks to use the medicine safely and to best effect.

The service is only available to people using certain medicines. In some cases where there’s a problem and a solution cannot be found between you and the pharmacist, you will be referred back to your GP.

 

Who is eligible?

The New Medicine Service is available for people who have been prescribed a new medicine for the below conditions:

• asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
• type 2 diabetes
• high blood pressure
• high cholesterol
• osteoporosis
• gout
• glaucoma
• epilepsy
• Parkinson’s disease
• urinary incontinence or retention
• heart failure
• coronary heart disease
• atrial fibrillation
• unstable angina or heart attack
• stroke or transient ischaemic attack (TIA)
• long-term risk of blood clots or blocked blood vessels, including DVT (deep vein thrombosis)

Background to the service

In England, around 15 million people have a long-term condition (LTC) and the optimal use of appropriately prescribed medicines is vital to the management of most LTCs. However, reviews conducted across different disease states and different countries are consistent in estimating that between 30 and 50 % of prescribed medicines are not taken as recommended. This represents a failure to translate the technological benefits of new medicines into health gain for individuals. Sub-optimal medicines use can lead to inadequate management of the LTC and a cost to the patient, the NHS and society.

It is therefore clear that non-adherence to appropriately prescribed medicines is a global health problem of major relevance to the NHS. It has been suggested that increasing the effectiveness of adherence interventions may have a far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatments.

Non-adherence is often a hidden problem, undisclosed by patients and unrecognised by prescribers. People make decisions about the medicines they are prescribed and whether they are going to take them very soon after being prescribed the new medicine. Research has shown that pharmacists can successfully intervene when a medicine is newly prescribed, with repeated follow up in the short term, to increase effective medicine taking for the treatment of a long-term condition.