LPC leaders: Use winter campaign for elderly to impress commissioners
NHS England’s £3 million 'Feeling under the weather?' campaign will encourage people over 65 to visit a community pharmacy during the early stages of an illness this winter, and Kent LPC chair Mike Keen says it could lead to other services
EXCLUSIVEAn NHS England campaign to get older people to visit pharmacies for health advice is a chance to impress local commissioners, LPC leaders have said. The £3 million 'Feeling under the weather?' campaign, announced by PSNC yesterday (October 9), will encourage people over 65 and their carers to visit a community pharmacy during the early stages of an illness this winter. The campaign will run for six weeks from November 3, and LPC leaders told C+D it could lead to locally commissioned services for older patients. Kent LPC chief executive officer Mike Keen told C+D that older people often sent their carers to the pharmacy instead of coming in themselves. The campaign could highlight the need to commission pharmacists to "make sure [older] patients are taking their medicines correctly" by visiting them at home. "You've got a whole cohort of people that end up in A&E due to medicines problems. [Commissioners] have got a target to reduce people accessing A&E, [so] why don't we look at doing domiciliary medicine reviews and proactively try to keep them out?" he said. "You've got to think practically. Some pharmacists can't be released [from the pharmacy], but when they can there's a real benefit to be gained by [visiting patients]," he added. Nottingham LPC chief officer Nick Hunter said the "ideal next step" after the campaign would be an urgent referral system that allowed pharmacists to send older patients to hospital if they noticed "red flag symptoms" without having to refer them to a GP first. "The carrot to commissioners is that while this a voluntary scheme, they don't have any control or ability to influence it. If we can create a commissioned service out of this then that gives them the ability to dictate that this meets a population's need," he told C+D. Swindon and Wiltshire LPC chief officer Fiona Castle said it was good that the campaign was targeting older people, as they often still saw their family doctor as the first port of call. But she questioned how pharmacists would "get the message" to older people who sent their carers to the pharmacy on their behalf. Recognising pharmacy's rolePharmacy Voice, who had input into the campaign, said it was "very happy" to see NHS England using community pharmacy to protect public health and reduce burdens on GPs and A&E. As part of the campaign, pharmacies will receive resource packs as well as additional support through NHS England's digital channels, PSNC said. It follows NHS England's 'The earlier, the better' campaign earlier this year which also encouraged the public to visit pharmacies rather than A&E.
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