Shift from hospital- to community-focused care in Scotland
Preventive health care based in local communities is the central theme of the Scottish Executive's new plan for the development of the NHS in Scotland.
Published last week, the plan — “Delivering
for health” — is
the Executive’s response to the recommendations made by the Kerr
report (PJ, 4 June, p667). The plan sets out the priorities for the NHS
for the next decade. These include providing preventive interventions
in primary care, increasing support for self-care, separating accident
and emergency departments from planned care units, and creating an electronic
patient record.
Announcing the report, health minister Andy Kerr said: “This is
a fundamental shift in the way we want our NHS to work. As good as the
work is that goes on in our hospitals, we have to try to help people
avoid having to use those services. I want to see health care that gets
out into communities and into workplaces.”
On pharmacy, the plan describes community pharmacists as key members
of the primary care team whose role will be enhanced by their new contract.
It also states that pharmacies will be used as walk-in healthy living
centres playing a role in the shift of services into the community. New
technology is key to many of the developments and for pharmacy this means
the ePharmacy programme (PJ, 13 August, p185). Last week’s report
confirms that the electronic minor ailment and public health services
are still scheduled to be implemented in April 2006, with the other core
services following by April 2007.
The document describes the success of a hospital electronic prescribing
and medicines administration system at Ayr Hospital. It states that it
has reduced many errors and is currently being evaluated for national
roll-out. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
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