Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) chief executive Malcolm Harrison has urged the NHS to “get on with expanding” the Pharmacy First service as it nears its second anniversary in England.
Speaking at a Westminster Health Forum conference on primary care this week (January 12), Harrison told delegates that there is still “room for growth” for the service.
He said the NHS “has dipped its toes in the water of pharmacy providing urgent care services” and thinks it “found it to be a good temperature” - but it now needs to “dive in and really get on with expanding and enhancing” the service, he added.
Read more: NHS film urges people to visit pharmacies before A&E and GPs
Harrison acknowledged that “over five million consultations” have been delivered through Pharmacy First since the service launched in January 2024, and noted that this represents “five million people that haven’t needed to go to a GP to get prescription-only medicines for minor and common conditions”.
But he said the CCA is “slightly concerned” that “only one in twelve Pharmacy First consultations” come from a general practice referral.
“We need to understand more about why this is, because all general practices have the ability to refer people into Pharmacy First,” he stressed.
“Work collaboratively”
Community Pharmacy London chief executive Conor Prince, who also spoke at the conference, raised concerns about issues with collaborative working in the primary care sector.
He said the “rhetoric” coming from NHS England (NHSE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) is that “we need to work collaboratively”.
“But the problem is we are commissioned competitively, and we are commissioned in a way that pushes us...to work against each other,” he added.
Read more: Poll: 70% of pharmacies want Pharmacy First booking system
“You just have to take flu vaccinations as an example of this, where it becomes pretty much a fight for who gets the most jabs done,” Prince continued.
But if the sector worked together “in a very neighbourhood approach”, he said, “then we’d be looking at improving patient outcomes, as opposed to just trying to work on our own”.
Lack of details
Conference delegates also heard from Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) chief executive and executive chair Dr Leyla Hannbeck, who said there were limitations to the government’s 10-year health plan.
The “intentions” and “aspirations” of the plan are “genuine and good”, she said, but the plan “lacks a lot of...the details required for [its] delivery”.
And she stressed that the “lack of clarity at this stage is really damaging [to] morality and private investment prospects”.
Read more: Pharmacy First: Report reveals ‘no change’ to UTI antibiotic resistance
It comes after a short film made by the NHS in December encouraged patients to seek health advice at pharmacies and “avoid unnecessary visits to A&E departments and GPs”.
The film featured a pharmacist explaining to a patient that their condition is one of seven that pharmacists can treat without “needing to see a GP first” as part of the Pharmacy First service.
Read more: CCA: Make pharmacies ‘natural home’ for routine primary care
And it follows a C+D poll from November revealing that seven in ten (70%) pharmacies would like patients to be able to pre-book Pharmacy First appointments.
According to the snapshot poll of almost 240 community pharmacy workers, 13% of respondents already offer patients the option to pre-book Pharmacy First services at their pharmacy.
