AHSN Thanks to Community Pharmacy

Written by AlisonFreemantle on Friday 6th October 2023

A note from Clare Howard Chair of Health Innovation Wessex Medicines Professional Advisory Group (PAG) 

At a recent PAG, a Primary Care Network (PCN) Pharmacist highlighted a positive incident where a local Community Pharmacist flagged to the GP practice that a particular patient was coming into the pharmacy with increasing frequency to collect opioid prescriptions. 

This alert from the Community Pharmacist triggered the GP practice to look at how often requests and repeat prescriptions were being issued and raised concerns.  

They contacted the patient and carried out a medication review and started the patient on an opioid reduction programme. The PCN asked if the AHSN could thank community pharmacy and encourage all community pharmacies to continue to highlight patients that may be requesting opioid medication (or other medicines with known dependence issues) more frequently than indicated.  

If you would like to see some of the opioid resources that the Wessex Opioid working group have developed, or some of the polypharmacy work that Health Innovation Wessex lead, then please see the links below:

 

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