Community pharmacists are set to supply more medicines such as contraception to patients without needing a GP prescription, the health secretary has announced.
The move comes as part of Dr Thérèse Coffey’s new plan for patient access, published today, which set out a range of measures to improve access to GP practices.
The document said that the Government will ‘expand the range of services available from community pharmacies, increasing convenience for patients and freeing up GP time for more complex needs of patients’.
Trailing the plan, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) last night announced that pharmacies will ‘help ease pressures on GPs and free up time for appointments by managing and supplying more medicines such as contraception without a GP prescription’.
It said this ‘could free up to two million general practice appointments a year’.
However, details on this ‘enhanced role’ for pharmacists remain scant in the plan itself that was published today.
The new document said: ‘Pharmacists will be able to manage and supply more medicines, without a prescription from a GP.
‘We will look to go further on enabling pharmacists with more prescribing powers and making more simple diagnostic tests available in community pharmacy.’
It remains unclear what medicines pharmacists could manage and supply other than contraception and which diagnostic tests they could be asked to offer.
However, updates to the community pharmacy contract also published today revealed that ‘tier 1 of a pharmacy contraception service’ will be introduced from 11 January 2023.
The new service will allow high street pharmacists to ‘provide ongoing management, via a Patient Group Direction, of routine oral contraception that was initiated in general practice or a sexual health clinic’.
They will be paid a fee per consulation of £18 as well as an initial ‘set-up fee’ of £900.
The contract document added: ‘From 4 October 2023, subject to positive evaluation, we will introduce tier 2 of a pharmacy contraception service, enabling community pharmacists to also initiate oral contraception, via a Patient Group Direction, and provide ongoing clinical checks and annual reviews.’
A pharmacy ‘contraception management service’ pilot is underway to test the service and was initially due to run from 30 September 2021 until the end of this month, although the NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA) had said there was the ‘possibility of extension’.
Patients are referred into the service by their GP or sexual health service with their consent.
The experience of GPs and practice staff during the pilot service are set to be evaluated alongside that of pharmacy staff and patients.
The pharmacy contract updates also revealed:
- Urgent and emergency care will be able to refer patients to high street pharmacies for a consultation for minor illness or urgent medicine supply from March
- Patients newly prescribed an antidepressant will be able to receive ‘extra support’ from their community pharmacist from 19 April, ‘subject to positive evaluation of an ongoing pilot’
- Pharmacy technicians will also be able to deliver blood pressure check and smoking cessation services, with other services or elements of services that may be deliverable by pharmacy technicians to be reviewed
The health secretary and deputy prime minister’s Our plan for patients also set out two-week GP appointment targets, the new publication of practice-level appointment data and reforms to GP pensions.
READERS' COMMENTS [1]
Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
I said this years ago. Most European countries are years ahead. Boring trivial appointment blocking. Follow a chart, fill in the box, sign on the dotted line of risks and go have your free medicine. You’ve got the internet for goodness sake. And talk to someone else about that hypothetical mood swing, unevidenced “weight gain”, what’s fashionable and the one spot that the pink or is it purple pill caused you. GPs know it is an utter waste of expert time to do blood pressure checks for pills in General Practice and chit chats.
Archaic.