The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) last week (November 27) published a report calling for reforms that put pharmacy teams “at the heart of palliative and end-of-life care”.
The report sets out several recommendations for the government and the NHS - including “strengthened” education and training on palliative care, a “single integrated electronic health record” and “embedding pharmacists in palliative care teams”.
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The body said that “many patients and families still face delays getting essential medicines” and experience both “poor communication between services and limited access to expert support in the community, especially out of hours”.
Many of its recommendations are “underpinned by the need for seamless information sharing and access to patient records across the multidisciplinary team” to enable “joined-up and integrated care”, it added.
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Other changes proposed by the RPS include “faster access to urgent and controlled drugs, especially out of hours”, post-bereavement support such as “medicine disposal and signposting to services” and the “creation of lead paediatric palliative care” roles for pharmacists in every region.
RPS president Professor Claire Anderson said that pharmacists are “central to helping people stay comfortable and supported at the end of life” but are “too often…working without access to vital information or key systems”.
“Lower than appropriate” fees
It comes as Community Pharmacy Liverpool (CPL) last month revealed in a newsletter that Cheshire and Merseyside will transition to a “harmonised palliative care service” across the region from April 1.
It noted, however, that the proposed fee for the new palliative care pharmacy service is insufficient.
The newsletter said that Cheshire and Merseyside LPCs “have been in discussions with NHS England (NHSE) for a number of months” and highlighted that the proposed service fee of £600 per year “is lower than the LPCs felt was appropriate”.
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“For some areas, this will represent an increase in fee, for others no change or a lower fee,” CPL said, adding that “it is up to individual contractors to decide [whether they] wish to sign up to this service”.
The newsletter also said that it is “likely” that pharmacies commissioned for the service “may find themselves directed to open on a more frequent basis than the regular rotation on the bank holiday rota”.
But it noted that “there is funding for this” and that “the payments for [the] rota are being reviewed at present” and “are likely to be adjusted in a positive manner” from next Easter onwards.
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NHSE will write to contractors soon to request expressions of interest (EOI) to take part in this service, CPL said, adding that the correspondence will also “include the proposed service specification”.
Existing “palliative care pharmacies will continue to be commissioned by their local service until March 31”, it added.
In 2022, the RPS launched a consultation on draft professional standards for palliative and end-of-life care for community pharmacy, while Boots launched a palliative care service across more than 2,000 of its pharmacies.
