Community pharmacists should push hospitals to start referring all relevant patients for medicines reviews to ensure “continuity of care”, a leading pharmacist told C+D.

 

It was “really important” that any patient who had their medicines changed in hospital received post-discharge care to dispel any confusion, said Heidi Wright, Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) practice and policy lead for England, on Wednesday (December 17).

 

Ms Wright echoed hopes that hospital colleagues would refer almost all of these patients to a community pharmacy in five or 10 years’ time, as set out in an RPS report on hospital referrals published on December 10.

 

Hospital referral to community pharmacy: An innovators’ toolkit to support the NHS in England calls on secondary care teams to refer relevant patients for the new medicine service (NMS) or an MUR. If implemented, community pharmacists would be likely to receive one or two referrals every two to three days, the report estimated, which it deemed a “manageable” workload.

 

The report will be circulated to every Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) medicines optimisation lead, chief pharmacist, LPN and LPC lead in England. Ms Wright added that NHS England, who wrote the introduction to the report, may also promote it to “get people talking about the benefits”.

 

Ms Wright highlighted the report’s recommendations for pharmacists to arrange meetings with key stakeholders to set up a referral system. She urged pharmacists to talk to LPCs and local professional networks (LPNs), which were useful because they “brought pharmacists together across all the different sectors within a locality”.

 

Community pharmacists should also talk to their hospital pharmacist to gauge their interest and discuss how it could work, as it was all about “building up relationships”, Ms Wright told C+D.

 

Benefits for patients

 

Evidence showed that patients were confused at point of discharge if their medicines had been changed, Ms Wright stressed. Community pharmacists could help iron out these problems if they received information on why medication had been started, changed or stopped, she said.

 

The move would also ensure community pharmacists were more integrated into the healthcare system, she added. “It’s being part of the system as well, so you’re not sitting on the outside – you’re integrated, you’re part of it,” she told C+D.

 

The RPS report has received backing from the Royal College of Physicians, which said its recommendations could “close the loop” between hospitals and community pharmacy and result in joined-up care for patients.