As a response to the letter from NHSE/I on 1.5.2020 COVID-19 response: Primary care and community health support care home residents, Coventry and Rugby and Warwickshire North CCG Care Homes Team developed and implemented a Care Homes Medicines Support Line.
It's aim was to provide a single point of access for care homes and clinicians, to provide medicines advice and support from experienced pharmacy professionals within our existing team. This was an innovative way of improving the quality of care, safety of medicines and improving access to our team's clinical expertise for the care home residents within our CCG.
The primary outcome of the support line has been to provide a timely response to medicine related queries for care home residents, improving patient safety and quality of care, by reducing the risk of harm related to medicines for people living in care homes and supporting care home staff.
Secondary outcomes, are reduction in GP/practice workload, and an increase in cost effective prescribing and reduced waste, leading to significant savings in prescribing costs. The support line has continued to evolve and latterly it has been used to support the maintenance of online ordering by proxy implementation which will further improve quality of care, and safety of care home residents as well as reducing waste and prescribing costs.
This has been successfully completed for 42 out of a total 103 care homes with 39 of these being maintained by the support line on behalf of their aligned GP practice.
