Transitions of Care presentation at Pharmaceutical Sciences Conference

Professor Efi Mantzourani has spoken at the 83rd FIP world congress of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, that took place last week in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The theme of the conference was, “Pharmacy forward: Performance, collaboration, and health transformation.” Professor Mantzourani presented a talk under the subtheme “Transitions of Care”, where she reported on collaborative effort between Cardiff University (including also Prof Karen Hodson), Welsh Government, and NHS Digital Health and Care Wales.

The World Health Organisation has identified the transfer of responsibility for a patient’s care between care settings as an area of focus to halve preventable medicine-related harm. Aiming to improve the continuity of care between sectors, a new community pharmacy service was introduced in Wales in the autumn of 2011. The Discharge Medicines Review (DMR) service consists of two parts: medicines reconciliation of the patient’s first prescription written by the GP post discharge, against those medicines the patient should be receiving (as per information from the hospital); a discussion between the patient and the pharmacist to support adherence to their medication.  The first evaluation of the DMR was published in March 2014, with two main findings: almost 40% of the interventions made by pharmacists had the potential to prevent people from attending A&E for urgent care, and for every £1 invested in the scheme, the NHS had a £3 return. However, delivery of the service was challenging for community pharmacy staff due to barriers such as identifying patients when discharged from hospital; timely access to the patient’s discharge information and time consuming paperwork. Discussions with key national stakeholders highlighted that technology could play an important role in overcoming these challenges.

Prof. Mantzourani’s talk presented the journey of the subsequent development and future-proofing of the service, including digital functionality, framed around three key pillars: continuous user involvement in development, ensuring a service tailored to their needs; evidence-based digital design including multiple cycles of action research; maximising spread and ensuring lasting impact.

Prof. Mantzourani said, “This project has been a real collaborative effort between lots of stakeholders in Wales, and evidence-base was at the heart of everything we did. Our approach has shown the service contributes to fewer errors upon discharge and the reduction of readmissions, both of which enable care outside of the acute setting.  The conference was a great opportunity for us to share our knowledge from this digital project with a wider audience, to improve patient safety across the UK and internationally.”