Medication supply at hospital discharge via community pharmacy: a quality improvement study

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.

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.

Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Scotland.

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.

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.

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.