The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7495 p351
29 March 2008

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Hospital pharmacy in Bolton to get access to electronic patient record

Pharmacy staff at the Royal Bolton Hospital will shortly have access to electronic summary care records (SCR) for inpatients, The Journal has learnt. Bolton and Bury primary care trusts are early implementer sites for the NHS care records service in England and the hospital’s pharmacy department is one of five access points for the SCR.

Brian Smith, the hospital’s chief pharmacist, believes that accessing the summary care record is a perfect way to check a patient’s medication history without having to track down his or her GP. “Because it is an extract of current information from the GP’s own system it is highly likely to be accurate,” he explained.

The pharmacy department hopes eventually to use the SCR as a routine method for verifying drug histories. All pharmacists and technicians who carry out ward-based medicines management services will be issued with a smartcard so that they can access the records. “We are moving towards ward-based technicians doing the vast majority of drug histories on admission,” Mr Smith explained.

It is hoped that staff will be able to access records within the next three to five weeks once smartcards have been obtained.

A spokeswoman for Bolton Primary Care Trust confirmed that community pharmacists in Bolton cannot access the SCR at this stage. There are now more than 165,000 records on the spine for Bolton and Bury residents and less than 1 per cent of people have opted out of having one created.