GPs could make more use of cheaper, non-branded versions of the most common prescription drugs without harming care, the National Audit Office said.
They also want health trusts to reduce wastage, often caused by over- prescribing.
Manchester Primary Care Trust and Tameside and Glossop PCT are wasting the most cash in the region - £3,360,313 and £3,302,853.
Trafford has the most cost-effective prescription bill, with £856,045 wasted.
The NAO study found wide variations on the prescribing of cheaper drugs - in the second quarter of 2006/07, the proportion of lower-cost prescriptions for one type varied from 28 per cent to 86 per cent across PCTs in England.
Dr Kailash Chand, regional representative of the British Medical Association, said: "I know that many prescriptions are started by hospitals who use a different list of approved drugs which may not represent the best value for money. Patients do not like frequent switches of drugs.
"The majority of GPs I know are not influenced by pharmaceutical companies' promotions."
In 2006, the NHS in England spent more than £8bn on medicines and there were 752 million prescriptions, the report said. The study comes after a report in February from the Office of Fair Trading said the NHS was paying hundreds of millions of pounds too much for branded drugs. The Department of Health, which buys £7bn of branded medicines a year, could get a better price for medicines, it said. Tweet
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One would hope that each doctor would merit each patient with a fulll assessment before starting to print out the prescription.
Should anybody be prescribed the wrong drugs for their own personal needs, just because it's cheaper? With the risk of it affecting their long term health needs?
The current culture is already driven towards targets that are often unnatainable.
I agree the service should be cost effective but I think there are better ways do do this.
Using cheaper alternatives is all well and good but what these people who demand this and have the power to put it into practice don't realise is the suffereing a lot of people on these drugs have to bear. For example, someone with severe back pain are prescribed a certain drug that works wonders for them, they are almost pain free for the first time in years, then some health person comes along and says use this drug, it's 50% cheaper, wow, what thrifty people they are but you only get what you pay for and the person is now suffering as much back pain as before. Of course money comes before a persons health doesn't it?
Regards
Dusty