For EMIS to work out whether a patient is overusing their medication, it needs to know how long the prescription is due to last.

Making sure this information is accurate is important because usage information affects how medication is issued and is shown in the medication screen.

In the EMIS medication screen, the patients current usage is shown as below:

If the medication is overused, when a patient requests more, it will automatically go into the GP workflow for authorisation instead of being able to be issued by your prescription clerk teams.

To edit the expected duration of a drug put in the number of days you're expecting the medication to last for in the box shown below (when editing or issuing a medication for the first time):

When thinking about salbutamol as shown above, it is sensible to set so that high users of salbutamol are identified and sent to the prescriber for review, so seettting it at 175 days would ensure this.   It is worth having discussions in your own practice about your approach to particular types of drugs when thinking about thtis.