Hospital Pharmacist
Vol 10 No 4 p140
April 2003

News summary

Chesterfield hospital pharmacy to dispense FP10s as part of LPS pilot

The hospital pharmacy shop at Chesterfield & North Derbyshire Royal Hospital is to begin dispensing FP10 prescriptions this month under a local pharmaceutical service (LPS) pilot.

Martin Shepherd, head of pharmacy and therapy services told Hospital Pharmacist that he had been frustrated for a long time by the controls on dispensing of community and hospital prescriptions and in particular, by the inability of the trust pharmacy department to dispense FP10 prescriptions for staff, visitors and patients.

Mr Shepherd says: "We receive a small but significant number of requests for dispensing for these groups — staff who are working shifts and who can't get to a community pharmacy, visitors and patients who have been held up in hospital, and patients and carers requiring medicines 'out-of-hours', particularly relating to palliative care. It seemed to me that LPSs provide an opportunity to modernise this arrangement — it conforms to the modernisation agenda regarding access to medicines as described in the Department of Health's NHS plan, pharmacy strategy etc , and regarding staff, as described in the 'Improving working lives' initiative".

Mr Shepherd approached the Chesterfield PCT to see if they were interested and via its prescribing sub-group he made a proposal which has been approved by the DoH. He told Hospital Pharmacist that they are not expecting large numbers of prescriptions, but anticipate that the scheme will deliver some significant service enhancement. The development will build on the hospital pharmacy shop which has been operational for several years selling medicines, mainly to staff.

"We plan also to move more hospital outpatient prescribing onto FP10s so that patients will have more choice as to where their prescription is dispensed," added Mr Shepherd.