GPs should signpost patients to pharmacies “when safe capacity is breached”, the BMA has said in a letter sent to health secretary Wes Streeting last week (October 17).
BMA GP committee chair Dr Katie Bramall said that it “will continue to remind and advise” GP practices that patients “should be appropriately signposted to NHS 111, urgent care centres, walk-in centres and community pharmacies” when “safe capacity is breached on any given day”.
Read more: Pharmacy bodies unite to slam ‘sneering’ GP letter
The letter warned Streeting that GPs in England “cannot safely accommodate” the increase in “patient requests and queries” received now that they must keep online booking open throughout their working hours as of this month.
And it said that it is “disappointing that when tensions are so very heightened, we may see regrettable comments from all sides”.
Read more: Revealed: Over 80% of public ‘likely’ to use pharmacies over GP
It follows the BMA distancing itself from a letter to GPs suggesting they should not refer patients to the Pharmacy First service as the scheme has a “significant potential to undermine” doctors.
The letter, reported by The Times earlier this month, claimed that patients using Pharmacy First are “being seen by less-skilled people to further enable the steady downgrade of patient expectations”.
The BMA stressed at the time that “this was not a BMA communication” and that the letter was sent “in error” by North East and North Cumbria local medical committees (LMCs) to local practices.
Read more: BMA distances itself from controversial Pharmacy First letter
Since then, five pharmacy bodies - the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA), the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA), the National Pharmacy Association (NPA), the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) and Community Pharmacy England (CPE) - have penned a joint response to the “troubling” leaked letter.
In an open letter published in The Times last week, the bodies said that “the rhetoric from some GPs and their adversarial approach to the wider NHS, including community pharmacies, is troubling”.
“Sneering at other clinical professionals does nothing to solve the crisis in the NHS”, they stressed, adding that “the main purpose of the Pharmacy First service is to relieve pressure on access to GP appointments”.
