Boots’ superintendent pharmacist has pushed for community pharmacy to be a part of future NHS weight loss services.
Claire Nevinson told MPs yesterday that this “type of holistic preventative service” is “perfectly placed” to be delivered through community pharmacies.
She said the NHS and the government have a “real opportunity” to look at how community pharmacy can support expanding NHS weight loss services, and suggested hybrid models of in-person and digital access to them should be explored.
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The Boots superintendent said following the launch of 17 in-person weight loss services pilot at its pharmacies in February, this will be expanded to 75 pharmacies in total by the end of April and it will roll out further.
“We’re seeing the demand as we would have expected for a pilot of this size.”
Access
Pharmacy2U chief medical officer Dr Kieran Seyan and Juniper public policy lead Dr Simon Doyle joined Nevinson at a Health and Social Care Committee (HSCC) yesterday that looked into private provision of weight loss medication, improving access to it on the NHS and wraparound care.
Nevinson said that the multiple would have a model to share of how these services could be made commissionable.
Seyan said Pharmacy2U would support a nationally commissioned weight loss services but that it has “local flexibility” with it.
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Doyle called for national commissioning to be done in collaboration with existing providers, and to pool funding from multiple government departments to help fund the nationally commissioned service.
He added that patients are “very keen for treatment”. But because of how funding has been allocated and NHS eligibility varying between areas that leads to a “postcode lottery”, patients are being told “you’re not unwell enough yet”.
“It doesn’t really makes sense to me that we’re waiting for patients to become more sick before we can start that prevention.”
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Seyan said the accessibility challenge could be resolved by changing the eligibility criteria for GLP-1s.
“It’s not possible for general practice to cope with the volume demand, so we need wider availability of access to care that could be through digital and pharmacy.”
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He warned drug companies launching generic cut-price semaglutide drugs in India last week may lead to an increase into accessing an illicit market.
“We’ve seen it before with PrEP when it wasn’t freely available in the UK. Healthcare practitioners were advising patients to get their medication from abroad. So, we’ve got precedent there, and it is a regulator challenge.”
Wraparound
MPs questioning the witnesses around wraparound care offered with weight loss services.
Nevinson said educating the public on wraparound care is important, as the multiple offers live webinars, podcasts and seven days a week access to a clinician.
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It has advice and resources available on its app, patients can add on one-to-one coaching services, and those accessing weight loss services for the first time have to collect their prescriptions from a Boots pharmacy so they can speak with a pharmacist in-person.
Seyan said Pharmacy2U’s patients go through a full clinical consultation, access a multidisciplinary team for ongoing support, as well as receive lifestyle guidance and post-consultation follow-ups.
In February, C+D reported that Pharmacy2U partnered with Reset Health to deliver these wraparound services.
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Doyle said Juniper published a paper that shows patients engaging the most in wraparound care are achieving better weight loss results.
He also advocated for better interoperability such as being able to access the summary care record (SCR).
It comes as MPs also questioned the pharmacy and medicines regulators yesterday on the threat of the illegal weight loss drugs market and whether they are keeping the public safe.
