NHS England has launched a ‘pathfinder’ programme to explore how independent prescribing should be used in community pharmacy.
The programme will span all of the 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) in England and could include up to 210 community pharmacies.
Earlier this year, as part of the general practice recovery plan, NHS England announced that patients would be able get prescription medicine directly from pharmacists without the need for a GP appointment for seven common conditions.
Pharmacy First, supposed to launch before the end of 2023, will allow pharmacists to prescribe medicines to treat sinusitis; sore throat; earache; infected insect bite; impetigo; shingles; and uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women, NHS England has said.
In an information page on its website, NHSE said that the independent prescribing pathfinder programme ‘presents a unique opportunity for community pharmacy to redesign current pathways and play an increasing role in delivering clinical services in primary care’.
And it added that ICBs will ‘be urged to fully utilise the skills and capabilities of community pharmacists to build on clinical services already commissioned as advanced pharmaceutical services or add into locally commissioned services’.
NHS England has written to ICBs setting out the next steps for the programme, asking them to work with local community pharmacies and other local NHS bodies to designate the pathfinder sites.
Each ICB will be able to determine the scope of their sites, which will be used to test how community pharmacy independent prescribing could be used to deliver commissioned services.
The success of the pathfinder programme will be evaluated by an independent organisation, and tender applications have opened this month for organisations interested in conducting the evaluation.
David Webb, chief pharmaceutical officer for England, previously described the introduction of independent prescribing on a widespread scale – when all newly qualified pharmacists will graduate with a prescribing qualification from 2026 – as ‘transformational for all sectors of pharmacy’, with the potential to improve medicines use and increase opportunities for deprescribing.
And he has said that the independent prescribing pathfinder pilot sites would help ‘test different models and allow for local variation in clinical design and delivery, responding to local needs and the availability of pharmacist prescribers’.
A version of this article was first published by Pulse’s sister title The Pharmacist
READERS' COMMENTS [4]
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Devils in the detail.There is all ways a default speak to your GP or it seems that way.Very risk averse as are not Medics.Not going to save GP land Im afraid.
Prescribing is easy and pharmacists are excellent. Diagnosis, totally different and despite what those who are tasked with getting blood out of the stone, they are sadly lacking in this step of the process! I personally tutored a pharmacist, lovely chap, but the deficit in their training was quite an eye opener. Was genuinely shocked at the lack of clinical acumen. Window dressing as usual, certainly won’t take work away from GP, probably the opposite!
“People will die….”
@ John Glasspool : They will, but it will not be the Pharmacists’ fault, it will be the fault of GPs.
What the NHS needs to take away from GPs is not the Doctoring jobs like diagnosis and medical advice, but the ridiculous amounts of admin like providing prescription services for secondary are teams; financial services like supplying little bits of green paper with wet ink signatures for pharmacies to obtain money; chasing up hospital appointments and waiting list queries; visiting patients with long toenails, diabetes, Scleroderma and resulting immobility because the Podiatry service don’t do foot problems; filling in referrals from the OT to the OT department, because the OT isn’t allowed to; arrangeing emergency transport and babysitting services for adults because there are not enough ambulance crews; and getting FIT tests on patients with visible loss of blood from the rectal area, instead of believing the GP report that they have seen blood, and they ought to know if it is blood or not as well as any hospital specialist, and better than the Chief Finance Officer of the Trust, for sure! Money and targets and silly referral / access criteria are blocking services from patients in need of care.