The NHS must grant community pharmacists full access to patient records to improve the care of people discharged from hospital, Pharmacy Voice has said. 

Pharmacists struggled to keep track of the needs of discharged patients because of a "lack of timely, relevant information" about changes to their medicines, the representative body said last week (July 31) in response to an inquiry by patient organisation Healthwatch.

Access to a patient's discharge summary, which should include a list of prescribed medicines as well as any changes made in hospital, was "fundamental" when planning care, Pharmacy Voice said.

It suggested that pharmacies should receive an electronic discharge letter and patients should receive a written copy they could give to their pharmacist.

Linking the information systems in community pharmacy and hospitals would enable pharmacists to identify prescription errors, it added, and pointed out that this could alert pharmacists to admissions at an earlier stage.

"If community pharmacies were contacted straight away after admission, rather than waiting for discharge, [they] would not deliver medicines to their patients that are no longer appropriate or required," Pharmacy Voice argued.

The electronic prescription service (EPS) and patient medication records could be integrated into the discharge process to provide "seamless care" for patients once they left hospital, it suggested.

Pharmacy Voice called for the creation of an "effective discharge planning strategy" that made full use of the new medicine service (NMS) and targeted MURs on certain discharged patients as part of a national framework. Patients who have been recently discharged from hospital are a national target group for MURs.

The representative group also called for a commissioning framework for community care that involved patients, commissioners and service providers, and incentives for prescribers to encourage pharmacy repeat dispensing services. It stressed that NHS England should work with clinical commissioning groups and health and wellbeing boards to improve care for discharged patients.

The unsafe discharge inquiry, Healthwatch's first since the organisation was set up in April last year, was launched in May to try to understand what happens when patients are discharged from hospital without proper support. Based on its findings, Healthwatch will advise health secretary Jeremy Hunt and national and local healthcare organisations on how to drive improvements.

"Tens of thousands of people are potentially being sent home without proper support when they leave hospital or a care home. People can be left isolated and end up in crisis that could have been prevented," Healthwatch said.

In April, Community Pharmacy Wales announced that pharmacies would be permanently contracted to deliver discharge medicines reviews after an evaluation showed the service saved the NHS money. The Home From Hospital service was shown to return £300,000 for every £100,000 invested in it.