Objective To measure the extent of medicines wastage in homecare through a waste evaluation scheme for adult renal transplant and HIV patients.

Method Collaborative work between our Pharmacy Homecare Team and homecare providers involved a verbal stock check of all homecare medicines when scheduling a delivery. Stock levels reported by patients were sent to the Homecare Technician, allowing amendment of the next prescription date on an in-house prescription management database. Details of any wastage were fed back to the Homecare Technician. Whether deliveries went ahead depended on the patient's stock level.

Results Data for a 1 year period were collected. In adult renal transplant homecare, medication wastage due to unusable medicines from drug or dose changes amounted to £3979. In HIV homecare a total of £5451 wastage was identified, either due to poor compliance or medicines left uncollected at a designated delivery address other than the patient's home. This economic loss equates to 0.2% of annual drug expenditure in homecare within these treatment areas. Conversely, we identified a total savings of £155 809 through updating the prescription management database based on the stock levels reported by patients. This in turn could be future wastage prevention and therefore cost avoidance.

Conclusions Much of the medicines wastage in homecare is preventable. There is a clear need for an accurate prescription management database and close liaison between the Pharmacy Homecare Team and both homecare providers and clinical teams to minimise wastage.