Outpatient clinical pharmacy services
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The traditional role of outpatient prescription dispensing is being replaced in many hospitals by clinical pharmacy input into the clinics themselves.
Outpatient clinical pharmacy services
The traditional role
of outpatient prescription dispensing is being replaced in many hospitals by
clinical pharmacy input into the clinics themselves. This practice follows the
logic that hospitals should only dispense medicines to those outpatients in
immediate need and the Audit Commission has recommended that primary and
secondary care should work together to limit the practice of outpatient
dispensing to eliminate much of the confusion that is commonly generated when
two doctors are prescribing to the same patient. This allows hospitals to
utilise some of the resources saved to implement more beneficial pharmacy services
and many hospitals pharmacists now actively manage medication for selected
outpatients, including those on anti-coagulation (see above), lithium,
rheumatology medication, lipid-lowering agents, transplant medicines and many
others.
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