Outpatients at Leeds trust benefit from home drug delivery
service
Some outpatients at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS
Trust no longer have to wait in the hospital for their medicines to be
dispensed.
This is because the Leeds trust recently awarded
Pharmacy2U, an internet-based pharmacy, a two-year contract to dispense
and deliver medicines for certain patients. Medicines can even be delivered
to patients’ homes if necessary.
Prescriptions for some renal outpatients are collected
from the hospital and dispensed by Pharmacy2U. The medicines are then
delivered to patients wherever they are in the trust or to their home
addresses. The next phase of the service will involve patients infected
with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Jon Cohen, professional services director at Pharmacy2U,
says that advantages of the dispensing and delivery arrangement are that
it allows clinical pharmacists to concentrate on their ward work.
Speaking to Hospital Pharmacist on June 19,
Una Laverty, pharmacy business manager at the trust, confirmed that there
were currently about 100 patients taking advantage of this service. She
explained that the prescriptions were clinically checked by a pharmacist
in the trust before being collected by Pharmacy2U. Ms Laverty said that
the arrangement with Pharmacy2U had helped to relieve the pharmacy department
of the extra workload involved in dispensing prescriptions for renal patients,
some of which took up a considerable amount of time.
Pharmacy2U, one of the first internet-based pharmacy
in the United Kingdom, has also announced that it will be working with
the pharmacy department at the Leeds trust to develop an electronic prescribing
link between the trust and the online pharmacy. The company plans to deliver
medicines prescribed in this manner to any location that is convenient
for the patient. Pharmacy2U hopes to extend these dispensing services
to include the provision of discharge medication.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals trust is the largest hospital
trust in the UK. The pharmacy service in the trust employs over 450 staff.
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