Government caps on funded pharmacy BP check numbers are due in part to “GPs who are perhaps driving the volume inappropriately”, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) NHS services director Alastair Buxton yesterday (May 12) revealed.
Speaking at the annual Sigma conference on changes wrought in the long-awaited 2025/26 funding deal, Buxton said that the hypertension case finding service specification “will be updated to clarify some of the patient eligibility requirements”.
Read more: DH to place ‘explicit restrictions’ on funded blood pressure checks
“We’ve got some patients who are coming in and wanting really regular – every three weeks –requests for hypertension, which is not the terms of service,” he said.
But GPs have also pushed the “department of health (DH) and NHS England (NHSE) [to] want to clarify” the service spec, Buxton added.
The clinicians are “not looking at case finding, but just dumping workload”, he said.
Raising the pressure
It comes as last month, the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) told C+D it was “concerned about the growing number of pharmacists being set individual targets for delivering blood pressure checks”.
“In a recent survey, 73% of respondents said that they have been put under pressure to undertake Pharmacy First consultations,” it added.
“It is unacceptable that pharmacists are put under pressure to achieve numbers of consultations to meet commercial goals, and we are increasingly aware that targets are being introduced around other services,” it said.
Meanwhile in November, GP leaders voted “overwhelmingly” for pharmacy blood pressure checks to be “terminated with immediate effect” at the BMA’s annual GP conference.
Read more: GPs to vote on ‘immediate’ end to pharmacy blood pressure checks
Speaking in favour of the motion at the time, representative of Mid Mersey LMC Rebecca Williamson said that by “failing to fund general practice” and “outsourcing” services to other providers, “more work” was being generated for GPs.
Representative of Devon LMC – who proposed the motion – Victoria Taylor-St Ruth said that “we cannot afford a race to the bottom” between GPs and community pharmacies.
