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Senior hospital pharmacists should be involved in planning and decision-making if corridor care for patients is required, the Royal College of Pharmacy (RCPharm) has said.
In a letter to health minister Karin Smyth, whose portfolio includes hospital care, sent in September 2026, Mahendra Patel, chair of RCPharm’s English Pharmacy Advisory Council, said that its members had identified a number of “targeted interventions” that could reduce pressure on hospital emergency departments.
Such interventions include investing in targeted polypharmacy and high-risk medicines reviews, supporting community pharmacy and general practice in post-discharge medicines follow-up and ensuring that hospital trusts include senior pharmacists in planning and decision-making about patient flow and corridor care, the letter said.
It also noted that the proposed measures focus on the fact that adverse drug reactions account for many emergency department admissions, which are “estimated to account for 16.5% of total admissions, with an annual cost to the NHS of £2.21bn”.
Corridor care creates pharmacy-specific challenges, including around patient access to time-critical medicines and safe storage of a patient’s medicines, the letter continues. It also highlights privacy concerns when taking a patient’s medicines history.
NHS England defines emergency department corridor care as a patient spending 45 minutes or more, within a 24-hour reporting period, receiving care in an inappropriate clinical setting. Provisional data for September 2026 showed that around 2,500 people every day received corridor care across emergency departments in England.
“With the abolition of NHS England and amid significant cuts to integrated care boards [ICBs], I would urge you to ensure that pharmacy clinical leadership is embedded across ICBs and the system to ensure the best use of medicines, improve outcomes for patients, and better manage demand on emergency departments and the NHS,” Patel wrote.
He added that he “would welcome a discussion with officials about how to support the national adoption of a set of pharmacy interventions around corridor care”.
The Department of Health and Social Care was contacted for comment.
