EXCLUSIVE

NHS England stirred up mixed feelings when it announced its £15 million investment into employing practice pharmacists this month. So, last Thursday, C+D ran a Twitter chat to gather more opinions on the funding for 250 pharmacists to work in GP surgeries.

The programme will start this winter and place one senior pharmacist and five clinical pharmacists in pilot sites across England for three years.

During the chat, the C+D team was joined by representatives from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), NHS England and the Royal College of General Practitioners. It was a chance for readers to directly question those leading the project, and the lively debate threw new light onto the issue.

1. The pilot could lead to more services for community pharmacists

Contractors such as Amish Patel, owner of Hodgson Pharmacy in Kent, warned the scheme offered “no protection for enhanced services” in community pharmacies.

But RPS England director Howard Duff said the scheme should increase community pharmacy’s chances of getting services commissioned – particularly those that “support long-term conditions and medicines optimisation”. He argued the collaboration between the two professions could accelerate the “grindingly slow evolution” of community pharmacy’s role.
 

2. The evaluation will consider how community pharmacists benefit

To further allay contractors’ fears, Mr Duff said that the evaluation of the surgery pharmacist scheme “must” ask community pharmacists how they had benefited.

NHS England South deputy medical director Marion Lynch specified that the evaluation would look at “professional and system outcomes”. Each GP practice would identify their own “benchmarks and improvements and improvements to be made” during the pilot, she said.

3. NHS England will only work with GPs who can pay

During the pilot, NHS England will pay 60 per cent of surgery pharmacists’ fees for their first year, dropping to 20 per cent by the third and final year. The remainder of the funding will be supplied by the GP practices.

This left some pharmacists worried GPs could abandon the pilot when the money “dried up”. C+D blogger Xrayser tweeted that some GPs may apply to the scheme “for the short-term funding instead of the long-term strategy”.

But NHS England’s primary care commissioning lead Rachel Snow-Miller reassured pharmacists that NHS England would only engage with GPs who had “thought through future costs”.
 

4. Practices already employing pharmacists will not be excluded

During the chat, GPs who already employed pharmacists showed an interest in joining the scheme – and NHS England confirmed they would still be able to apply.

Matthew Piccaver, a GP in East Anglia, said he already had a pharmacist in his surgery but wasn’t “claiming a penny” for it. NHS England’s Ms Snow-Miller reassured GPs such as Dr Piccaver that they would not be “excluded just because you’re ahead”.

“We are anticipating that practices will come together to bid for more than one pharmacist,” she told the Twitter chat.
 

5. Pharmacists will apply directly to GP practices

When asked how pharmacists would be able to apply for a surgery position, Ms Snow-Miller said practices would recruit directly. She advised interested pharmacists to apply to pilot sites once they had been announced.

GP practices will also mount their own recruitment drives. They have until September 17 to apply for the scheme, and Ms Snow-Miller said on Twitter that it would run “roadshows” to explain the details, with the first taking place in Bradford on August 20.

But she said NHS England would be “interested” to hear other ideas on how it could “matchmake” GPs and pharmacists interested in the pilot.

140 Users tweeted on July16 using #PharmsInGPs

903 Tweets using #PharmsInGPs  on the day

7.3secs Average time between tweets during the chat