Instant answers to queries is one of the most useful elements of the Dorset Care Record for community pharmacist David Rose.
David, who runs the pharmacy at Marnhull in North Dorset, has been the most extensive user of the shared care record: “The most useful thing is you get answers to queries and you can sort out the problem. Now, you don’t have to come back to it or chase for answers later if someone hasn’t got back to you.
“You can also look for answers to queries you have referred and no reply has been received, which happens fairly often.
“Another thing is seeing Dorset County Hospital letters and discharges often before their action by the GP – even before these documents show within the GP record,” he said during a recent webinar.
Quite often a patient comes in expecting a prescription and David says he can look to see if one should be issued. Sometimes it’s been issued by a non-prescriber but not yet signed. David recently logged the different range of issues where he used the DCR during a week:
- Has the item been prescribed? In this case it was dressings for a nurse link and we found out it had not been prescribed.
- In another case steroid cream was indicated for a person that they wanted to know if they might have had it previously prescribed. We found it had not.
- The pharmacy received a prescription for an injection that was needed in a couple of hours but it was a non-formulary item and therefore “we did not have it in stock”. By looking at the DCR, we knew who to phone and get it changed to the formulary item that we had in stock – “one happy patient,” said David.
David said it was possible to look at why requested items hadn’t been issued and why there had been no response to requests.
“When a patient swaps to us, our system will say that they may be eligible for the new medicine service and we may not be able to tell if they have had the drug or not, but you can look on the Dorset Care Record and see if they have had the drug or not, but you can look on the DCR and see if they have had it before which just saves asking the patient when they come in. It saves us time,” he added.
One of the common situations David faces is patients coming in and finding they have no prescriptions at the pharmacy. Sometimes this is because the prescriber accidently clicked to print paper prescription and they never printed and was not signed. On other occasions, the GP had intended to prescribe something in the notes but actually didn’t go to prescribe it, but this can be followed up by the pharmacy.
“We’ve had someone come in where the GPs recommended they purchase a medicine, but they can’t remember what they’re meant to purchase when they get to us, so we are used to looking up what that was. We look up if items have been stopped. We had a query last week regarding a patient on two diuretics, which was unlikely and we could tell that the prescriber had accidentally left one on repeat when he prescribed the new one.”
David said he used the DCR a lot for the discharge medications service: “Last week we had a patient requesting an item they hadn’t had for a couple of years and asking us if we could go and find out what it was. They know what it was but not what it was called. But by looking at the DCR we could tell that the prescriber had changed their mind and cancelled the prescription before he actually signed it but not told the patient that.”
- David was speaking at this week’s Community Pharmacies and Dorset Care Record webinar