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Date: 22 May 2012
Time: 17:04
Hospital pharmacy move complete
Story posted/last updated: 19 January 2012
Around a thousand outpatients a week are now being served by pharmacy@QEHB Ltd in Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham following the final transfer of outpatient services.
All outpatients from both the old QE Hospital and Selly Oak Hospital are now able to obtain their medication from the pharmacy within the iconic new building.
Oncology outpatient dispensing services transferred to pharmacy@QEHB from the old Queen Elizabeth Hospital shortly before Christmas 2011, while the final part of the process was completed in January 2012, with haematology patients from nearby Morris House.
Inderjit Singh, Managing Director, pharmacy@QEHB, said: “Now we can start to consolidate.
“Since July 2011 it has been a constant process preparing for a succession of outpatient transfers.
“We are now looking to improve our services further, now that all the QE and Selly Oak Hospital outpatients are served by the new pharmacy following the transfer of haematology.”
UHB sees around 10,000 outpatients a week on average, with approximately 10 percent of patients requiring medication from the pharmacy service.
Mr Singh said they were looking to further expand the service by starting to post out medication to some of its longer-standing outpatients.
“We are offering this service for patients who we normally see every 4-6 months but are on complex medication regimens, which need to be provided by the hospital rather than their GP. This saves them the inconvenience of arranging supply with their local community pharmacy,” he added.
UHB’s new pharmacy, which officially opened last July, is also about to open a full shop service to staff. It is currently offering a small range of ‘over the counter’ medicines for sale, but this will be considerably expanded from the end of January 2012.
Mr Singh said: “We will be offering around 250 different lines of non-prescription medicines for sale to staff and visitors from the pharmacy.
“We are open Monday-Friday until 19:00, so it is more convenient for staff to get them here rather than try to find an open pharmacy after they have finished work.
“We are doing a small range now but, by the end of the January 2012, we expect to have the full range, which will be stored in new cabinets currently being provided.”
In July 2011, Pharmacy@QEHB was in the news when a state-of-the-art robot used to help dispense medicines was unveiled and later named following a competition.
Phred, which stands for Pharmacy Robot-Efficient Dispensing, can dispense a variety of different medicines in seconds at incredible speeds and without error.
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