Improving access to medicines for hospital outpatients

UCLPartners worked with NHS, industry and patient partners to make outpatient medicines pathways more convenient, equitable and closer to home.

Challenge

More outpatient care is now delivered remotely, giving many patients greater flexibility in how they access support.

But for people who need medicines prescribed and dispensed through hospital outpatient pharmacies, access can still be complex. Growing demand for homecare medicines services is also putting pressure on capacity, making it harder to provide timely, equitable and cost-effective care.

What we did

We brought together Pfizer, Alliance Healthcare, NHS partners, patients and wider stakeholders to explore a new model for outpatient hospital medicines provision. The first phase included six months of engagement, roundtables and workshops to understand the current system, identify barriers and co-design practical solutions across different medicines pathways.

Patient and public involvement and engagement was central to the work, helping ensure the approach reflected people’s experiences and priorities. The findings were published in the Outpatient Medicines Transformation Phase One Report, which highlighted opportunities to improve routine, shared care and specialist-complex medicines pathways. In phase two, the partnership is testing these findings in a real-world setting, starting with a proof of concept focused on low-tech specialist-complex medicines.

Outcomes and impact

The programme is supporting a more patient-centred and scalable approach to medicines access.

For patients, this could mean more convenient access to medicines closer to home, better continuity of care between hospital and community settings, improved equity of access and fewer hospital visits.

For the NHS, the work could help release capacity in homecare medicines services, improve cost visibility and financial control, make better use of community-based clinical expertise and support a lower-carbon model of care.