Pharmacists 'vital' to improving post-discharge care, NHS England says
Commissioning body urges pharmacists to help mana post-discharge medicines and helping to iron out the lack of communication between secondary and primary care settings, which contributed to 10,000 patient safety incidents in one year.
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NHS England has urged pharmacists to help tackle problems in post-discharge care, which contributed to 10,000 patient safety incidents in one year. The commissioning body told C+D on Friday (August 29) that pharmacists had a "vitally important role" in managing post-discharge medicines and helping to iron out the lack of communication between secondary and primary care settings. The call came after NHS England issued a patient safety alert on the same day, which set out plans to improve the "complicated" care of post-discharge patients by gathering feedback and best practice examples from healthcare providers. Although the alert did not mention pharmacists specifically – instead naming GPs and community nurses – NHS England told C+D pharmacists were "central" to its work. "The professions mentioned in the alert are intended as examples only and certainly not intended to exclude pharmacists, who should rightly be recognised as central to the work on medicines optimisation following discharge," the commissioning body said. 10,000 patient safety incidents related to discharge were recorded between October 2012 and September 2013, a third of which were down to problems in communication, it said.
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