Hospital Medicines added to GP practice prescription record
Information for GP practices
Adding “outside” medicines (those prescribed and supplied outside the practice) to patient prescriptions will result in:
- Safer prescribing: prescription record is complete allowing GP practice clinical decision support to flag drug interactions
- Increased patient safety: these medicines appear in the Emergency Care Summary (ECS)
- Improved medicines reconciliation: due to more complete record of prescribing in ECS
Guidance on adding medicines prescribed/supplied/administered outside the GP practice into the GP practice prescription record is provided by Primary Care Informatics (formerly known as Scottish Clinical Information Management in Practice).
- These “outside” medicines will appear on the patient’s repeat medicine slip if added as a repeat medicine;
- They are segregated and DO NOT have an order tick box;
- Due to the sensitive nature of some “outside” medicines, e.g. medicines used in the management of HIV, it would be appropriate to discuss with the patient that these medicines will appear on the repeat slip for their agreement.
Key “outside” medicines that GP practices should consider adding are:
- Clozapine
- Opioid substitution therapy (such as methadone, buprenorphine)
- Antiviral hepatitis C treatment
- Antiretroviral HIV drugs
- Antipsychotic depot injections
- Anti-TNF biologics
- DMARDs (such as cyclophosphamide and methotrexate supplied by acute services)
- Zoledronic acid (intravenous)
- Chemotherapy
- Medicines supplied directly to patients by homecare services (such as darbopoetin, immunoglobulins, growth hormone)
Information for acute and community services
There is no contractual requirement for GPs to maintain the complete patient medication record so these “outside” medicines may:
- be missing from the ECS or,
- be on the ECS after they have been stopped.
GPs do not necessarily know the strength or dose of the "outside" medicine prescribed to the patient, therefore any entry on the ECS is only indicative.
Published 12/01/2022. Medicines Update blogs are correct at the time of publication.