The Scottish Government has launched a consultation on the draft Polypharmacy Guidance: appropriate prescribing, making medicines safe, effective and sustainable 2025 – 2028. They’re seeking comment and feedback by 22 September 2025.

The importance of polypharmacy reviews – to patients and to our planet

Taking multiple medicines (known as ‘polypharmacy’) can be appropriate but can also be problematic – for example when increased risk of harm from interactions between drugs or between drugs and diseases outweighs the intended benefits.

Appropriate polypharmacy management can have a positive impact on:

• patient safety
• clinical effectiveness
• our environment
• costs

As more people are living longer with more complex multimorbidity (living with two or more chronic conditions), one in six unplanned hospital admissions are as a result of medicine related harm. A UK wide report stated that 15% of people are taking more than five medicines daily.

Ensuring appropriate prescribing and initiation of medicines and undertaking regular person-centred medication reviews can reduce waste and reduce harms associated with medicines use. This benefits the individual by ensuring the effective use of medicines whilst supporting greener and more sustainable care, as outlined in our polypharmacy commitment in the NHS Scotland NHSScotland Climate Emergency and Sustainability Strategy.

New tools are also now available to support GP practices and clusters implement polypharmacy reviews in GP practice. The resources which include a GP cluster report, implementation toolkit, data pack and templates for GP IT systems, complement the polypharmacy guidance and can be accessed on the Right Decision Service app or website.

Get involved

You can view the draft guidance and respond to the consultation online.

There will also be a virtual event on 26 August from 2pm to 3:30pm. If you would like to attend please email EPandT@gov.scot.

Please share with your networks too, as the Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics team are keen to ensure all interested people have the opportunity to feedback on the guidance.

The consultation closes on 22 September 2025.

If you have any questions around the consultation or attending the consultation virtual event or would like more information about implementing polypharmacy reviews in your practice, please contact the Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics team at EPandT@gov.scot.

Photo by Goutham Krishna