Pharmacy First Service

What does the service involve?

The new Advanced service involves pharmacists providing advice and NHS-funded treatment, where clinically appropriate, for seven common conditions:

• sinusitis
• sore throat
• acute otitis media
• infected insect bite
• impetigo
• shingles
• uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women.

Consultations can be provided to patients presenting to the pharmacy as well as those referred by NHS 111, general practices and others.

The service will also incorporate the existing elements of the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, i.e. minor illness consultations with a pharmacist and the supply of urgent medicines (and appliances), both following a referral from NHS 111, general practices and other authorised healthcare providers.

In the consultations with a pharmacist, people with symptoms suggestive of the seven conditions will be provided with advice and will be supplied, where clinically necessary, with a prescription-only treatment under a Patient Group Direction (PGD) or in one pathway, an over-the-counter medicine.

Equipment

Where ear examinations are performed within the pharmacy, the pharmacist must use an otoscope. Consequently, all pharmacies providing the service must have an otoscope.

Guidance on selecting a suitable otoscope can be found in Annex C of the service specification.

Standard Operating Procedure

Pharmacy owners must have a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the service, which all staff participating in provision of the service must be familiar with and follow.

Various pharmacy support organisations provide template SOPs which their members can personalise for use in their pharmacy.

Competency and training requirements

The pharmacy owner must ensure that pharmacists providing the service are competent to do so, including the use of an otoscope and be familiar with the clinical pathways, clinical protocol and PGDs. This may involve completion of training.

The pharmacy owner must keep documentary evidence that pharmacy staff involved in the provision of the service are competent and remain up to date with regards to the specific skills and knowledge that are appropriate to their role, and to the aspects of the service they are delivering.

CPPE have also developed with NHS England a Pharmacy First self-assessment framework, which pharmacists can use to assess their knowledge in relation to the service and to identify any gaps in their knowledge, which need to be filled.

CPPE Pharmacy First page (including the Pharmacy First self-assessment framework)

Select an IT system

As with the current Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, an NHS-assured Pharmacy First IT system, which meets the minimum digital requirements of the service (as specified within the Community Pharmacy Clinical Services Standard and including an application programming interface (API) to facilitate transfer of data into the NHSBSA MYS portal) must be used by pharmacy owners.

When choosing an IT supplier, pharmacy owners may want to refer to the NHS CPCS IT Buyers Guide.

These IT systems  allow pharmacy staff to make a clinical record for the service and the data in the record will then be used by the IT system to populate a claim for payment within the NHSBSA’s MYS platform.

The NHS-approved clinical IT system will also send messages containing a summary of the consultation to the patient’s general practice.

The following four IT suppliers are currently working with NHS England to develop their systems to include functionality to support the service, but over time, we expect other suppliers will add the service to their systems:

Sign up to provide the service

Pharmacy owners must notify NHS England that they intend to provide the service by completion of an electronic registration through the NHS Business Services Authority’s (NHSBSA) Manage Your Service (MYS) portal.

Registrations will open on 1st December 2023.

Withdrawal from the service

If the pharmacy owner wishes to stop providing the service, they must notify NHS England that they are no longer going to provide the service via the MYS platform, giving at least 30 days’ notice prior to the cessation of the service. The pharmacy owner may be asked for their reason for withdrawal from the service.