Healthera’s new “Pharmacy First referral network” will save pharmacists “up to 20 minutes or more” per consultation, the company told C+D yesterday (March 25).
From next week, patients using Healthera can complete “digital questionnaires” and video calls on its app or website and be referred to “all 1,600” of the pharmacy technology provider’s partner pharmacies, it said.
The “clinically specific” pre-consultation questionnaires include “all the necessary questions” needed for pharmacists to check whether a patient meets the gateway criteria for each Pharmacy First condition and can also be emailed to walk/in or over-the-phone patients, it added.
Read more: IT chaos left 3/4 of pharmacies unable to complete Pharmacy First consultations
Patients can then book a consultation timeslot with both brick-and-mortar sites and online pharmacies, which can offer consultations for six of the seven common conditions, without the need for a GP or NHS 111 referral, it said.
Pharmacists can offer in-person or online consultations depending on what they “prefer”, the spokesperson added.
Healthera said that becoming a partner pharmacy will set pharmacies back by “£149 per month as standard”, with other benefits including “prescription ordering, service booking [and an] OTC shop”, but that it offers “certain discounts during large feature launches”.
App will hand “control back to pharmacists”
"We've launched digital Pharmacy First journeys to make the entire process as simple as possible for pharmacists,” Healthera chief executive Quintus Liu told C+D.
He said that by “giving more immediate visibility within each consultation”, “driving more revenue to local pharmacies” and allowing pharmacists to screen patients, “Healthera's Pharmacy First module hands control back to pharmacists”.
Read more: ‘Three clicks more than we want ’: GPs refuse to make Pharmacy First referrals
He added that the “first-of-its-kind” software, which “also covers existing Pharmacy First conditions in Scotland”, took “months” to develop.
“We will continue working with our pharmacy network and the wider pharmacy community to expand this module in line with future developments,” he said.
In January, the company announced that a new partnership with Uber would allow patients to order and track prescription deliveries with live updates.
