Pharmacies in the south-west of England have received funding to deliver a second pilot of a type 2 diabetes support service, C+D has learned.

Wiltshire Council agreed to put up £5,000 to trial the service across Swindon and Wiltshire pharmacies from February, following the success of a pilot carried out in Devon last summer, Fiona Castle, chief executive officer at Swindon and Wiltshire LPC told C+D.

The service will replicate the Devon pilot, which resulted in half of the patients with low adherence being boosted up to a ‘medium' score, according to an evaluation published last month. That pilot, which took place across 12 pharmacies, involved a face-to-face consultation, followed by a phone call from a pharmacist two to three weeks later.

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	Swindon and Wiltshire LPC would be making improvements to the service if Devon LPC agreed there were areas that could have been done better, Ms Castle said.

Wiltshire Council agreed to the funding after Ms Castle delivered a two-minute presentation on the service at a local diabetes summit. She told C+D she expected around 20 pharmacies to take part. 

"The process was very quickly approved," she said. "They knew they had availability within the budget and they were looking for something that could be initiated straight away, something to replicate."

She added: "The secret to getting money like this is having something that you can just deliver, without having long consultations about it. If I had to design something and get different people to agree to it then it wouldn't happen."

Devon LPC project lead Mark Stone said he was delighted the service had been introduced in Swindon. "This was one of our aims when we did the work, to get it used and tested elsewhere, as we need evidence for community pharmacy," Mr Stone told C+D.

The Swindon pilot, along with compulsory training on diabetes, will run until June, with an evaluation taking place in July. Only pharmacies meeting their MUR targets were eligible to sign-up, although training was open to all pharmacies, Ms Castle said.