Background: Patient delays at the point of their discharge account for more than half a million additional bed days every year in Scotland, United Kingdom. Bottlenecks in discharge medication dispensing contribute to such delays.
Aim: To test whether the discharge process could be made more time-efficient by utilising community pharmacy supply of medicines on the day of discharge, rather than hospital pharmacy supply.
Setting: Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Scotland.
Development: Local community pharmacy staff received training and communication about each patient discharge. Pharmacies could access an immediate discharge letter (IDL) on a shared electronic record. The existing pandemic law allowed medication dispensing from this IDL, without a prescription.
Implementation: The programme was implemented from June to November 2020, across three Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles. Comparisons were made between the new community pharmacy model and standard hospital model.
Evaluation: Across three PDSA cycles, in total 335 patients had community pharmacy supply compared to 376 patients eligible for hospital pharmacy supply. The median time taken from creation of the IDL to final completion was significantly lower in the new community pharmacy model compared to the hospital pharmacy model; 154 min (interquartile range (IQR) 82-272 min) vs 296 min (IQR 197-1281 min) p value < 0.000 CONCLUSION: A community pharmacy supply model compared to a standard hospital pharmacy model resulted in a median time saving of 142 min per patient. Such a time saving has the potential to deliver a transformational change in patient flow and free up hospital pharmacy staff to deliver other clinical interventions.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11096-023-01635-4 | DOI Listing |
Medicine (Baltimore)
January 2025
Optometry, College of Applied Medicals Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Disease-related fatalities in Saudi Arabia (SA) are on the rise, with 28% of all deaths attributed to cardiovascular diseases, followed by cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disorders. In response to this issue, pharmacy dispensing practices have been significantly altered. One such innovative approach is the drive-through pharmacy service.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Microbiol
January 2025
Institute of Microbiology and Dahlem Centre of Plant Sciences, Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
The leaf surface, known as the phylloplane, presents an oligotrophic and heterogeneous environment due to its topography and uneven distribution of resources. Although it is a challenging environment, leaves support abundant bacterial communities that are spatially structured. However, the factors influencing these spatial distribution patterns are not well understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Pharm Pract
January 2025
School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Objectives: To explore the perspectives of stakeholders on the General Pharmaceutical Council's revised Standards for the Initial Education and Training of Pharmacists that enable pharmacists to prescribe at the point of registration, from 2026.
Methods: This qualitative study used the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to develop schedules for structured interviews that were conducted with various stakeholders and recorded via Microsoft Teams. Recordings were transcribed verbatim, checked for accuracy, and then analysed using the Framework approach, facilitated by NVIVO® software.
JAMA Health Forum
January 2025
Department of Population Health Sciences, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York.
Importance: The prevalence of pharmacies owned by integrated insurers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), or insurer-PBMs, is of growing regulatory concern. However, little is known about the role of these pharmacies in Medicare, in which pharmacy network protections may influence market dynamics.
Objective: To evaluate the prevalence of insurer-PBM-owned pharmacies and the extent to which insurer-PBMs steer patients to pharmacies they own in Medicare.
Naunyn Schmiedebergs Arch Pharmacol
January 2025
Department of Infectious Diseases, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Emodin, as a natural active ingredient, has shown great application potential in the fields of medicine, food and cosmetics due to its unique pharmacological effects, such as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-cancer, etc. In recent years, with the development of science and technology and the increase of people's demand for natural medicine, emodin research has been paid more and more attention by the global scientific research community. The bibliometric analysis of emodin and the construction of knowledge map are still blank.
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