NHS England (NHSE) has issued advice on the role of community pharmacies in supporting individuals who will be released early from prison in the coming weeks.

A letter from NHSE has flagged the potential for Pharmacy First and the Pharmacy Contraception Service to be used to support those being let out of prison as part of a government initiative to help tackle prison capacity pressures.

Those eligible for the initiative will be released from prisons across England on 10 September 2024 and 22 October 2024.

NHSE said it needed support from pharmacies and GP practices to ensure ‘continuity of care’ for those individuals.

It confirmed that prison medical services will provide 28 days of medicines on discharge ‘to allow time for primary care prescribers and patients to access the next supply’.

For opioid substitution therapy, a prescription for up to 14 days or a short-term interim supply will be provided.

‘Pharmacy teams have an important role’

The letter said community pharmacy teams had ‘an important role in supporting patients with ongoing medicines supply and walk-ins’.

And it pointed to the use of Pharmacy First and the NHS Pharmacy Contraception Service as examples of services that can be used to support people released from prison – including people accessing an urgent supply of a repeat medicine following referral to Pharmacy First via NHS 111.

NHSE’s electronic prescription service (EPS) is starting to be rolled out into the prison healthcare system, meaning that over the next year pharmacy teams may start to see electronic prescriptions issued by healthcare services in prisons.

An HM prison-issued FP10 or FP10MDA prescription which is issued to a person who has been released from prison is exempt from NHS prescription charges, NHSE noted.

These prescriptions will carry the letters ‘HMP’; the prison name and address; prison telephone switchboard number; and prescribing code on the front of the form.

In these instances, the patient does not need to complete a signed declaration on the back of the form and exemption category 0015 should be used for processing HMP prisoners on release.

NHSE said: ‘Our priority is to ensure continuity of care and the effective management of long-term conditions for early prison leavers.

‘At a time of great uncertainty for many of these men and women, who are our patients both in prison and in the community, the ongoing provision of care and treatment is a crucial element in supporting their rehabilitation, reducing health inequalities and minimising the risk of reoffending.’

Community Pharmacy England separately noted that the initiative could have implications for drug and alcohol treatment and recovery service providers.

The negotiator said this would mean that with potentially new individuals to support, some pharmacies may be asked to support the dispensing of opioid substitution therapy for people released from prison.

It added that local councils and drug and alcohol treatment service providers have discussed this with many Local Pharmaceutical Committees (LPCs) over the last few weeks and that further information may be available at LPCs on the local situation.