England’s chief pharmacist praises “incredible” services

NHS England’s Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, David Webb, has praised LUHFT’s Discharge Medicines Services, which is helping to reduce hospital re-admissions, following a visit to the city.

The new service sees patients referred to a community pharmacist when they leave hospital. This helps to reduce readmissions to hospital from patients who have issues with or queries about their medicines.

It is estimated that 60% of patients can have three or more changes made to their medicines during a hospital stay. By referring patients directly to their community pharmacy when they are discharged, checks are in place to make sure patients are receiving the most effective care. In Liverpool, the service is already reducing re-admissions to hospital.

The NHS Discharge Medicines Service – which involves the first direct referral from hospitals to community pharmacies, and is part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework - is now being rolled out across the North West to assist in the NHS’s pandemic recovery.

David, who was accompanied by Richard Cattell, Deputy Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England, was also given a tour of the Trust’s new aseptic unit by Professor Alison Ewing, Clinical Director of Pharmacy and Shakeel Herwitker, Pharmacy Production Lead.

They also met with members of the wider Pharmacy team as well as Professor John Brennan, Interim Medical Director.

David said: “It was great to meet the Liverpool hospital pharmacy team and

see some of the incredible clinical work teams have been doing to support patients, including the integrated approach with community pharmacy teams.

“This shows effective ways in which we can integrate and work together to the benefit of everyone and Liverpool is showing us the way forward in terms of how we can do it and do it well.”

Professor Ewing said: We are immensely proud of the impact the service has had so far – and that, by working in partnership with our community pharmacy colleagues, we’ve developed an approach in Liverpool that’s going to help others. The team here has worked hard during what’s been a challenging couple of years to get the service up and running. We can see from the results that it’s helping people.

Karen O’Brien, North West Regional Chief Pharmacist and Controlled Drugs Accountable Officer for NHS England North West, added: “To see this kind of progress with referral from hospital to a community pharmacist for clinical care so quickly is encouraging and I am so proud to see it happening in the North West of England. Community and hospital pharmacy teams have stepped up to many demanding tasks in the last two years to support the entire system and this is another example of why pharmacy is a vital resource to the NHS.”