Over 90% of community pharmacies sign up to consult on common conditions

More than 90% of community pharmacies have signed up to deliver Pharmacy First in England, primary care minister Dame Andrea Leadsom has revealed.

In a written answer published yesterday, the parliamentary under-secretary for health and social care confirmed that the service – aimed at reducing demand for GP appointments – would launch in ‘early 2024’.

And she said that ‘over 90% of community pharmacies have now signed up to deliver the service’.

The comments came in response to a written question form Labour / Co-Operative MP for West Yorkshire Rachael Maskell, who also asked what steps had been taken to prepare and train pharmacists and other pharmacy staff to deliver the service.

Dame Andrea responded: ‘Community pharmacies are private businesses that provide National Health Service pharmaceutical services and [it] is up to them to provide their staff with the necessary training.’

She added that a set-up fee will be paid to participating pharmacies ‘to recognise that pharmacy contractors must ensure that pharmacists and pharmacy staff providing the service are competent to do so, which may involve of training’.

And she pointed to the checklist developed by Community Pharmacy England (CPE) ‘for both pharmacy owners and pharmacists, including locums, to help them get ready for the service’.

‘Contractors are supported by additional resources provided by the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education to ensure participating pharmacists are clinically competent to deliver these services safely,’ Dame Andrea added.

Pharmacies that signed up to deliver the common conditions service before 11:59pm on 31 December 2023 will receive an initial fixed payment of £2,000 on 1 February 2024.

And those that sign up before 11:59pm on 30 January 2024 will receive the £2,000 initial fixed payment on 1 March 2024.

From February 2024, pharmacy contractors delivering the service will receive a fixed payment of £1,000 per month, subject to delivering a minimum number of consultations.

However this morning the House of Commons’ Health and Social Care Committee heard concerns from some stakeholders in an evidence session dedicated to the scheme.

Healthwatch England’s head of policy, public affairs and research William Pett told MPs that at the moment patients prefer seeing their GP because of continuity of care and because they doubt they will have the same level of privacy with a pharmacist.

He said: ‘We must accept that patients are used to seeing their GP as their first port of call for many health conditions, so Pharmacy First is welcome but there are going to be some restrictions on how quickly some patients are going to want to take up some of those services, rather than seeing their GP.

‘We asked about the seven conditions and we found that while the public were generally positive about going to their pharmacy for things like sore throats and earache, and far less would do so for UTIs and for shingles.

‘We heard one of the top reasons why people are unlikely to go to the pharmacy is that they just prefer to see their GP, and a lot of that was around continuity.

‘But there are other factors as well, privacy is actually a really important concern for some patients especially on sensitive issues like UTIs – patients want to know that they are going to be seen privately, in a consultation room and many patients aren’t aware that pharmacies offer private consultation rooms.’

Following the scheme’s announcement, the Doctors’ Association UK urged the Government to urgently review why pharmacies are paid ‘more than double’ per consultation compared with GPs.

And GPs told Pulse they believed that the Pharmacy First money would be better off spent in general practice.

A version of this article was first published by Pulse’s sister title The Pharmacist