Chief Pharmaceutical Officer Opens Pioneering Outpatient Dispensing Unit At City Hospital • Lloydspharmacy and Royal Liverpool University Hospital in joint venture to improve patient care
Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for England, Dr Keith Ridge, today officially opened an innovative new service for patients at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
The Lloydspharmacy outpatient scheme is a partnership with the Royal which brings together community pharmacy and secondary care. The idea behind the new service is to improve efficiency whilst maintaining quality for patients. The new pharmacy facility currently provides outpatient dispensing for haematology, gastroenterology, pain and renal clinic patients. Speaking at the official event, Dr Ridge said “I am delighted to be opening this service. The partnership utilises the expertise and resources of both hospital and community pharmacy for the benefit of patients and I congratulate all those involved in its successful development and implementation.” Outpatients using the service are able to collect prescriptions at the Lloydspharmacy which is located within the hospital, on the first floor. The new venture means that hospital pharmacy staff will be able to spend more time providing advice and assistance to medical and nursing staff as well as to patients. Alison Ewing, Clinical Director of Pharmacy at the Trust said “Since the new pharmacy opened, we have reduced the time that our patients have to wait for their prescriptions as the unit is dedicated to outpatients. In setting this service up we have been able to release some of our own pharmacy staff time to allow us to develop patient services in other areas within the hospital. We are pleased to be working with Lloydspharmacy and hope this partnership will continue to improve the service we provide to our patients.” In implementing the service the Lloydspharmacy team worked very closely with the hospital pharmacy team, shadowing them and undertaking intense training on hospital protocols. They also received detailed clinical training to ensure they were fully briefed on the different specialist drugs which may be prescribed in hospital. Andy Murdock, Pharmacy Relations and Governance Director at Lloydspharmacy commented “We have an excellent working relationship with the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and are delighted at the success of the project. It has been a learning process for both parties but has enabled the sharing of community and hospital pharmacy expertise resulting in a pioneering service, that of which we are all extremely proud. “We believe that community pharmacy, which has customer satisfaction and dispensing at the core of its business is well placed to work alongside hospital trusts to deliver service efficiencies and service improvements. We hope that this project will provide best practice and key learnings that other trusts may benefit from in the near future.” Alison Ewing added “This project has demonstrated joint partnership working at its best with extensive planning and cooperation taking place between both parties. We are excited to see the full impact once the pharmacy is servicing all hospital outpatient clinics, which we expect to have taken place by November 2010.” Press Officer
Lloydspharmacy
Tel: 02476 432192
Email: pr@lloydspharmacy.co.uk February 2010
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