Option 6 - Care Home medicines - Community Pharmacy Enhanced Service: Case management study in GP practices

Theme 6 is How Can The Quality Of Care Be Improved?

Tim Banner begins with Care Home medicines: Community Pharmacy Enhanced Service ...the first year before Mark McCrudden tells us about Case management study in GP practices.

Timothy Banner started as the All Wales Consultant Pharmacist for Community Healthcare in 2014. His main areas of responsibility included providing leadership on issues relating to the practice of continuing care pharmacy services across Wales and responsibility for leading future development and co-ordination of NHS managed continuing care pharmacy services in line with the Welsh Government. Tim has chaired a Royal Pharmaceutical Society Wales steering group to develop the guidance ‘Improving Medicines Use for Care Home Residents’ with support from the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales. Tim also has responsibility to develop links with academic organisations and increase pharmacy-related research and publications in community healthcare. Tim has recently taken on the role of Head of Patient Services for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board but still retains an interest in community healthcare.

‘Care Home medicines: Community Pharmacy Enhanced Service – the first year’

Care Home medicines management has been a challenge for both health and the Care Home Inspectorate to promote and ensure consistency of standards for medication, in line with NICE guidance published in 2014. In Wales, Care Home medicines management had been highlighted as an area for pharmacists to increase support to both the homes and individual residents. An opportunity was sought at a national level to develop a service for community pharmacies to provide support to Care Homes in a consistent manner by utilising all members of the pharmacy team. This service also aims to identify high risk medication and promote multidisciplinary medication review, with data and activity recorded on a national database.

Mark McCrudden registered with the Pharmaceutical Society in 2009 and joined the Northern Health and Social Care Trust in 2010 as a clinical pharmacist. He has worked in two GP surgeries as a specialist case management pharmacist, as part of a four centre project examining the input of a clinical pharmacist into patient care. He has been in his current role as Lead Pharmacist for Unscheduled Care since 2017 and runs a pharmacist led anticoagulation clinic in primary care once a week.

‘Case management in GP practices’

The role of the pharmacist is changing across primary and secondary care. Pharmacists are increasingly being involved in medication reviews and the management of complex patients. Within the last two years, GP practices in 4 centres across the UK undertook a study in which clinical pharmacists managed a caseload of complex patients with the aim of improving patient outcomes by the rationalisation of their medications and reduction of medication related incidents. The project was carried out in collaboration with Queens University Belfast and the ABPI. This presentation will discuss an overview of the specialist pharmacist case management role, how pharmacists can input into patient care within GP practices and the potential roles available in the future.