National achievements

Pharmacists across UHDB are “proud to be keeping patients safe even after they leave our care” after being recognised at a national level for their work. 

The Medicines Optimisation team has worked collaboratively with digital services at the Trust and pharmacies across the region to develop an interface that improves communication with community pharmacies. This helps to ensure patients have the right medication they need, with safety reviews, after leaving hospital.

This interface works alongside a national programme call the Discharge Medicines Service (DMS), which helps create more effective communications between our hospitals and community pharmacies. This means that changes to a patient's medication are updated across the healthcare system to ensure patients don't come to avoidable harm by taking incorrect medication, allowing them to continue to recover well after a hospital admission. 

Thanks to the team's work, up to 760 readmissions have been prevented by ensuring patients have access to the correct medicines in the community.

Such has been the impact of this work, the team has been shortlisted in the Improving Medicines Safety Award category at this year's HSJ Patient Safety Awards - which acknowledges hard-working teams and individuals across the UK who are continually striving to deliver improved patient care.

Paul Thornley, Medicines Optimisation Project Lead at UHDB, expressed his pride at the team's hard work over many years to help make improvements to their service and enhance patient safety: 

"I'm incredibly proud of everyone's commitment and the impact this has had across our communities. The whole team got a real buzz when it was announced that we'd been shortlisted, and it's amazing to see everyone's work being highlighted on a national stage.

"We have always been keen to improve our service and communications between hospital and community pharmacy teams, so we are proud to have been shortlisted for our part in keeping our patients safe even after they leave our care."

Clinical pharmacy colleagues can send referrals for adult inpatients to their chosen community pharmacy once the patient has been discharged, which allows their medication to be reviewed and updated across all their records. This helps to ensure patients are continually receiving the correct medication to enhance their recovery and avoid their condition worsening again, which could otherwise lead to a further stay in hospital. Data also shows that should patients need further hospital treatment, they are discharged faster — reducing the amount of time they do spend in hospital if they do require further care.

A recent audit of patients admitted to hospital showed that 79% were prescribed at least one new medication during their stay, which can often cause side effects, or interact with existing treatments, meaning that patients may then need further hospital care if their medications are not managed effectively.

Following the launch of the service, a project team began working to see how they could fully incorporate this into Trust system to ensure information about medication changes were effectively and clearly communicated with pharmacies in the community to avoid any potential risks.  

Further improvements were made to the system to make it an automated process, reducing the time taken to transfer the information to community pharmacists and reducing the risk of human error. 

As a result, it is estimated that up to 760 patients have avoided a further hospital admission at UHDB since January 2023, with the team keen to increase the number of patients who have their medication managed in this way.

Paul added: "In the past, it has been a very manual, time-consuming process. We still have a member of the team that reviews all patient information and prescribed medications before it's sent to community pharmacies. Automating the process has helped ensure the information we're sending is accurate, easy to understand and readily available so when patients visit their local pharmacy for their medications, they are getting the right medicine and the correct doses to enhance their ongoing recovery.

"We know that, nationally, around 80% of patients are prescribed a new medication during a hospital admission, so improving the communication between pharmacies across the region is absolutely vital to ensure we're giving our patients the right care and the best chances of making a quicker recovery."

The team has now begun to focus on patients prescribed strong medication while in hospital, such as opioids, to ensure they don’t continue taking them longer than needed once they have been discharged, reducing the risk of developing a dependency or other associated complications. 

Paul continued: "Implementing this across two Electronic Prescribing and Medication Administration (ePMA) systems has been a huge challenge, but we are really seeing the benefits of it now, and we are in the top 25% of trusts in the country utilising the service in this way and refer around 10% of all adult inpatients this way. 

"We are continuing to work closely with our community pharmacy colleagues, who have been incredibly helpful on this journey, and are aiming to increase our referral rates significantly to help further enhance patient safety, reduce preventable hospital admissions, and save valuable NHS resources."

The HSJ Patient Safety Awards ceremony takes place on Monday 16 September, and will also see two further teams from UHDB in the running to win the Urgent and Emergency Care Safety Initiative of the Year Award.

The Medical Same Day Urgent Care team have been shortlisted for their work to help patients avoid being admitted for a hospital stay when attending our emergency department at Royal Derby Hospital. The second shortlisted team from the Trust in this category involves pharmacy colleagues based in our emergency department who help to review medication for frailty patients to help avoid readmissions.