NHSE health and justice national director Kate Davies and primary care group director Alex Morton said that the thousands of people set to leave prison in the coming months faced “great uncertainty”. 

They called on primary care providers to “ensure continuity of care and the effective management of long-term conditions” in a letter addressed to integrated care boards (ICBs), GP practices and community pharmacy. 

 Davies and Morton asked community pharmacists in particular to help familiarise the prison leavers with Pharmacy First, NHS 111 and the NHS pharmacy contraception service. 

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They said that pharmacies may see more “non-nominated EPS prescription barcodes and/or FP10MDAs”, which will be issued to people when they leave prison.  

Those being released early will be given 28 days of medicines on discharge, and people on opioid substitution therapy will have been given an FP10/FP10MDA “for up to 14 days or a short-term interim supply as per local arrangements”, according to the letter. 

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Pharmacists were asked to note that people presenting these types of prescriptions will be exempt from prescription charges.