The Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital has been the first hospital in Australia to adopt the Pharmacist Shared Medicines List, the latest medicine safety initiative of the Australian Digital Health Agency.

Based on a media release, the PMSL is a consolidated list of a consumer's prescription and non-prescription medicines, uploaded on My Health Record. It also includes a clinician's reason for prescribing medicine and how and when patients should take them.

The list can only be created by pharmacists after completing an in-pharmacy medicine review and by pharmacists who are preparing a dose administration aid. Hospital pharmacies can also produce the list for discharged patients. 

ADHA CEO Amanda Cattermole said they are working closely with the Victorian Department of Health to further roll out the PSML to other providers across the state. 

WHY IT MATTERS

The ADHA said the PSML was developed to help patients and providers safely manage medicines from the time a patient is discharged or sent into a residential aged care facility. It also assists them in avoiding medicine-related accidents. In Australia, around 250,000 yearly hospital admissions are medication-related and are costing the health system about A$1.4 billion ($1.04 billion). A recent study noted two-thirds of such cases are "potentially preventable". 

The list is more beneficial to patients with a complex condition or chronic disease and who are taking multiple medications, the agency added.

Additionally, the list highlights the changes to a patient's regular medicines during their hospital stay, showing GPs and community pharmacists "any medicines that have been stopped; directions and doses that have changed; new prescriptions; and the reasons for each medicine use and medication changes," said Catherine Rokahr, director of pharmacy at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. 

THE LARGER TREND

To prepare pharmacists for generating and uploading a PSML, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia updated its My Health Record guidelines in 2019. 

The Australian government has also embarked on an initiative to implement real-time prescription monitoring systems nationwide with the aim of reducing medicine misuse and abuse in the country. The Australian Capital Territory is the latest state to adopt the system, which is locally called Canberra Script. New South Wales is on track to complete its rollout of SafeScript NSW by May, while the Northern Territory is about to begin its implementation of the NTScript this month.