Reuben Morgan
Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board
Aim:
Medicines HomeCare is a service of medication delivery, prescribed and managed in secondary care, delivered directly to a patient’s home at a time that convenient.
If you required high cost specialist medication prescribed in a secondary care setting, delivered to your door, wouldn’t you want the service governed by the leaders in the field within the NHS in Wales?
That is exactly what the latest Welsh Audit office findings, of the gold standard service provided by the Medicines HomeCare Team in ABMU Health Board.
Context:
The quality and standard of medicines homecare services across the NHS in Wales is disjointed, under-resourced and lacking leadership.
Planning and development:
Detailed procedures have been written and changes to existing practices implemented to ensure clinical, corporate and financial governance targets are achieved, and addresses the standardisation issues.
Benefits:
Ownership and responsibility of prescriptions has achieved an opportunity cost of £39,544.
A once for Wales approach reduces the variation of procedure and policies across the National Health Service, standardises the practice of Medicines Homecare and ensures value for money.
The potential VAT savings accrued by this delivery method can be reinvested into patient care.
ABMU Health Board has maximised these potential savings by investing in staff to safely manage the medicines provided via HomeCare, and if ABMU were responsible for medicines homecare for Wales the National savings would amount to £101,054 per annum.
Missed revenue opportunities due to team capacity issues, based on latest demography data, amounts to an estimated £1,367,642 per annum.
