Every care home should have a named pharmacist and GP responsible for its medicines and ensuring coordinated and consistently high standards of care, says a report by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

‘The Right Medicine: Improving Care in Care Homes’ recommends that pharmacists should have overall responsibility for medicines in care homes, and that where a home specialises, eg, in dementia care, the pharmacist should endure they are competent to support that speciality. It also recommends that pharmacists should be locally commissioned to provide medicine reviews in care homes.

Other recommendations include:

• All pharmacists directly involved in patient care should have full read and write access to patient health records
• All residents should receive a falls assessment on admission and regularly thereafter, and a pharmacist should be involved in risk assessments for medicines-related falls
• Pharmacists should play a key role as part of the multidisciplinary team providing oversight of psychotropic medicines’ use
• Advice about, and access to, end-of-life and anticipatory care medicines should be formalised between prescribers, pharmacists and care home providers.