Alistair Grey, lead pharmacist at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, told C+D that a scheme to share electronic patient discharge letters with local community pharmacists has improved the safety and speed of patients leaving hospital.

Patients spent a total of 171,300 days unnecessarily taking up hospital beds in England in June, despite being clinically ready for discharge, according to NHS England statistics released last week (August 11). This was a  23% increase on the total for June 2015.

The commissioning body said the main reason for these delays was that patients were awaiting further non-acute NHS care. This accounted for 29% of all delays, it added. 

Pharmacy scheme reduces discharge rates

Mr Grey, who helped set up the Refer-to-Pharmacy scheme – which enables hospital pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to refer patients directly to their community pharmacist – said the Royal Blackburn Hospital is already seeing imporvements in discharge rates.

Sharing the electronic discharge letter with local community pharmacists means “everyone is in the same loop, at the same time”, he explained.

“We are starting to see a reduction in readmissions”, he said. "Traditionally we would phone the community pharmacist about blister pack changes – we can now share that information in 15 or 20 seconds," Mr Grey added.

Reducing readmissions

Mr Grey also said a pilot to begin placing a dedicated pharmacist on each hospital wards is helping patients “go home earlier and get better faster”.

“We are getting the medicines sorted out at least a day before the patient is due to go home,” Mr Grey said. “They are not staying in as long and not being readmitted."

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society told C+D that community pharmacists have a “huge role” to play in the discharge of patients from hospital.

“When patients move between care providers, the risk of miscommunication and unintended changes to medicines remain a significant problem,” the society said. 

Pharmacy London chief executive Rekha Shah agreed that "better working" across hospital and community pharmacy for medicines optimisation "could help enormously" with delayed discharges.