HEALTH bosses in Oxfordshire are offering GPs extra money to cut the number of drugs they prescribe to care home residents and the frail elderly.

Through a new 'incentive scheme', the Clinical Commissioning Group is asking practices to save at least £2 per patient and offering them half of this amount if they achieve it. 

It says the move could save £1.45m but argues there is 'opportunity for additional savings' through deals with individual practices.

But it has sparked warnings from doctors' leaders that it puts cost-cutting before patient health.

“The danger here is that the CCG should not approach it from the view to reducing costs," Andrew Green, prescribing lead for the GP committee of the British Medical Association, told Pulse magazine.

"They should approach with a view to getting the right care for the patient.”

The scheme proposed by health bosses, offered on a trial basis to surgeries in April, encourages GPs to 'rationalise' the prescription of medicines to people aged over 70.

It recommends that medication for 10 per cent of care home residents is reviewed, with a view to whether it should be stopped or started.

But Mr Green added: "In frail elderly patients in care homes it is highly likely that it is a case of stopping, rather than starting, medication.

"So it might well be that the result is cutting costs, but that mustn’t be the aim.”

Patient Concern spokesman Joyce Robins told The Times the scheme appeared to be 'a bribe'.

He said: "Telling GPs you can be better off financially by prescribing less to patients doesn’t seem like a good idea.

"You would like to think patient care was their main priority, not cost savings."

A report by the CCG claims the scheme will 'further enhance the quality and cost effectiveness of prescribing within the area'.

It adds: "This scheme aims to offer all practices a financial incentive to reduce prescribing costs.

"It is not solely based upon budgets and recognises that much work to improve the cost effectiveness of prescribing has already been carried out in many practices.

"Practices are asked to review prescribing in a chosen therapeutic or process area where the cost effectiveness of prescribing could potentially be successfully improved, without impacting on the quality of patient care."