Adding hospital medication

Adding hospital medication

EMIS provides the ability to record medication which is prescribed by third parties such as hospitals. This is a useful clinical safety feature to guide primary care clinicians in being aware of all medication a patient is taking. Typically such medication is not prescribed in primary care, but the drugs are made available through the drug dictionary.

The first part of the process is identical to adding any other medication by adding a drug in an open consultation or from the Medication tab.

Below is an example of adding a monoclonal antibody drug used in the treatment of blood cancers.
  1. Type the name of the drug. Hospital only medications will be marked in red.


  2. Once selected, a warning box may appear. Note the Alert for hospital only preparation


  3. Having pressed Override, add the necessary dosage instructions, we suggest adding HOSPITAL ISSUE ONLY, NOTED HERE FOR SAFETY.  Quantity and duration are largely redundant. The Rx type is also less significant, and can be left as Acute.                                                                                               


  4. Proceeding to the Issue screen, click on the Change All icon at the top. Hospital only medications will only have two options. Select hospital only, then press Approve and Complete at the bottom.

  5. Returning to the Current Medication screen, the drug will be shown under the Hospital section. 

Despite EMIS' recommendation that the hospital drug be 'issued' whenever a patient is given it by the hospital, the frequency of issue or delays in communications may prevent Practices from doing this. The last issue date is more likely to be the date it was added to the record. If left alone, the last issue date can be used to show when the hospital medication was added. Some surgeries may prefer to actively review the status of hospital medication regularly; issuing the hospital medication will update the last issue date so a recent date will demonstrate that the medication has been checked and is up to date.

There are a number of points which staff and patients should be aware of when using the hospital medication feature.
  1. Hospital medication can only be updated manually. Changes to the dose may not be accurate if staff haven't received updates from the hospital, or the drug may have been stopped. 
  2. Hospital medication will be merged into documents as part of the current medication list. It is not separated under the Hospital heading but instead will appear under Acute or Repeat.
  3. Hospital medication may appear on online services apps. Patients should be aware that does not mean they can order these drugs via their GP.
  4. Hospital medication does not appear on repeat medication slips.
  5. Hospital medication may be picked up by concepts and searches. Few concepts and searches are designed to ignore hospital medication. In practice this is unlikely to be an issue since hospital medication rarely features in general practice activity.

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