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Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus colonies
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus colonies from a Seattle hospital patient grow in a blood agar plate at a local lab in Seattle. Photograph: Mike Siegel/AP
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus colonies from a Seattle hospital patient grow in a blood agar plate at a local lab in Seattle. Photograph: Mike Siegel/AP

Online comparison tool aims to help GPs cut number of antibiotics prescribed

This article is more than 7 years old
System allows doctors to see how many drugs other surgeries hand out in effort to tackle growing problem of antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’

GPs are being given a “new weapon” in the fight against the growing menace of antibiotic resistance in a bid to encourage them to hand patients fewer of the overused drugs.

Family doctors will be able to compare via computer the amount of antibiotics their surgery is prescribing with other surgeries across England. NHS bosses hope that GPs who realise that they are high prescribers will then reduce the number they hand out and treat patients with some ailments in a different way.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “We’re giving GPs the power to see the latest data on how many antibiotics their peers are prescribing. I want to see antibiotics being prescribed only when necessary and hope this will be a new weapon to help GPs cut the numbers of antibiotics needlessly being given out.”

His move follows George Osborne’s warning last week that the ability of infections to withstand antibiotics will pose a greater threat to people across the world than cancer by 2050 unless urgent action is taken. The new tool, called Fingertips, is being managed by Public Health England.

It will give GPs monthly updates on how many of the drugs their surgery is prescribing. It shows, for example, that GP practices in the Camden clinical commissioning group area of north London currently prescribe the fewest antibiotics.

Dr Maureen Baker, chair of the Royal College of GPs, backed the move, but stressed that it should not be used to name and shame individual surgeries because of their prescribing habits. “Any tool to support GPs to make informed decisions about whether to prescribe antibiotics should be welcomed. But this data must not be used as a stick to beat GPs with. If, for example, one practice can be seen to be prescribing more than a neighbouring one, there may very good reasons for that,” she said.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, has previously warned that an “apocalyptic scenario” could develop over the next 20 years, where patients die during routine operations from previously treatable infections. She welcomed the move: “GPs can now compare their prescribing patterns, which will hopefully encourage people to think whether antibiotics are really needed and help save modern medicine as we know it.”

The new aid for GPs comes as it emerges that a new, antibiotic-resistant strain of gonorrhoea is spreading across England and has resulted in a doubling of the number of reported cases. The outbreak of “super-gonorrhoea”, which cannot be tackled by one of the two antibiotics that doctors usually deploy, began the north of England last September In all, 16 cases were initially reported: 12 in Leeds and four in Macclesfield, Oldham and Scunthorpe.

However, health experts are worried because the number of confirmed cases has now risen to 34 and people have been found to have contracted it in the West Midlands and south. Public Health England is due to issue an update on the outbreak on Sunday.

The new strain of the sexually-transmitted infection poses a potentially serious threat to public health because it is resistant to azithromycin, one of the two antibiotics usually used together to treat it. But it is still being successfully repelled by the other drug, called ceftriaxone.

The number of antibiotics being prescribed by GPs is falling thanks to calls to review their practices and resist patients’ demands for them, and also as a result of financial incentives that NHS England introduced last year, which has cut the number handed out by 5.3%.

Patients need to get used to receiving antibiotics less often when they fall ill, Baker said. “Public perception needs to change. Our patients need to understand that when diseases become resistant to antibiotics, it means that antibiotics will cease to work and as it stands, we don’t have an alternative.”

More on this story

More on this story

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  • Brexit could weaken rules on antibiotics in farming, activists warn

  • Rise in persistent UTIs could be linked to antibiotics crackdown

  • Antibiotic resistance rising among dolphins, study reveals

  • Bacteria developing new ways to resist antibiotics, doctors warn

  • World's rivers 'awash with dangerous levels of antibiotics'

  • Antibiotic resistance as big a threat as climate change – chief medic

  • The drugs don’t work: what happens after antibiotics?

  • Nationalised drug companies may be needed to 'fix antibiotics market'

  • Genes linked to antibiotic-resistant superbugs found in Arctic

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