DMS – Top Tips!

DMS top tips:

Statistics show that only 16% of patients that are prescribed a new medicine take it as prescribed, experience no problems and receive as much information as they need.

Pharmacist counselling in outpatients with chronic disease reduced mortality from 17% to 11% over 2 years.

Targeted pharmacist counselling has been shown to reduce readmission rates from 21.6% to 15.7% where support has been provided.

Best practice guidance:

  1. Make sure you have a dedicated member of the pharmacy team whose role it is to check Pharmoutcomes each day for new referrals and for referrals that still require follow up.
  2. Ensure that the team share this responsibility to ensure continuity every day.
  3. Have up to date contact details of the Trust Pharmacy team in case of queries.
  4. Make contact with the Trust Pharmacy Teams to build working relations.
  5. Ensure you know who your local PCN pharmacists are, so you have to ability to do a DMS onwards referral for a structured medication review if needed to resolve an issue.
  6. Confirm the referral by accepting it on Pharmoutcomes if you are going to provide the service or reject the service if there is a reason that you are unable to provide the service and enter the reason for doing so.
  7. Contact the newly referred patient within a specific time frame to organise a timeslot to discuss discharged medications.
  8. Check PMR for any existing prescriptions and remove medication that has been stopped.
  9. When receiving the first prescription after discharge from GP surgery, ensure that it corresponds with discharge notification.
  10. Provide any appropriate service or advice eg NMS, when you speak to the patient.
  11. Keep good records of all your interventions.
  12. Ensure all new staff  and the whole team understand the DMS, not just the process but also the wider context of how important it is to prevent avoidable readmissions.
  13. Check your monthly claims for DMS, if referrals drop, you can act to understand if it is an internal issue or an issue with the Pharmacy Team at the Trust.

If you have any experiences of providing the service that you think would benefit our pharmacy colleagues, please do share then with us via admin@dorsetlpc.org.uk

Thank you!