NHS England plans to monitor data recorded by pharmacies delivering Pharmacy First to see if any “outliers” are abusing the service, an NHSE spokesperson on community pharmacy has said.

Speaking at the Clinical Pharmacy Congress in London on Friday May 10, NHSE head of delivery for community pharmacy, Pallavi Dawda, said the NHS “takes monitoring of the service really seriously” and will be analysing consultation data “looking for those trends, looking for outliers”. NHSE will take the same approach to ensure antibiotics are being prescribed appropriately, she added.

Ms Dawda spoke in response to an audience member who said he was aware of a pharmacy that had carried out clinically unnecessary UTI pathway consultations for staff members because the business “wasn’t hitting targets”.

The same audience member asked whether NHSE takes a view on companies imposing Pharmacy First targets on employees, prompting chief pharmaceutical officer David Webb to reply that “concerns over professional conduct” should be addressed “at ICB level” or by the General Pharmaceutical Council.

“Those mechanisms are in place where the processes are not being conducted in the spirit that was intended,” Mr Webb said.

Asked by P3pharmacy whether NHSE would be prepared to review the minimum activity threshold for the monthly £1,000 fixed payment if there are widespread difficulties in meeting the target of 30 clinical pathway consultations a month from October onwards, Pallavi Dawda replied that the 30-per-month figure was based on NHSE modelling of “how many [patients] could go through the service,” adding: “Let’s see how we progress. At the moment there is no intention to change those numbers.”

Referral service to launch ‘in next few weeks’

On efforts to speed up digital interoperability between pharmacies and GP surgeries, Ms Dawda said: “We are streamlining digital referrals. We’re hearing from GPs saying ‘we need an easy way to make referrals; my reception team doesn’t have the time to spend making clunky referrals.

“We’re working on a booking and referrals service that will be made available over the next few weeks.” A forthcoming standard for appointment booking will allow referrals from secondary care as well as general practice, she said.

She added: “I’m [also] hearing a lot of noise about how can pharmacists be expected to deliver a service with their hands tied behind their backs; they need to be able to see blood test results, they need access to patient records.

“We’re enabling that to happen and over the next few weeks and months pharmacies will be able to see a patient record.”

Work is also being done to allow all pharmacies to record Pharmacy First consultation on patient records, said Ms Dawda as she referred to a “huge digital development underpinning the work we’ve done”.

In response to audience members who raised concerns about the current electronic systems, David Webb said the “points about digital infrastructure are really well made,” and that the “connectedness” between services is of vital importance now and in the coming years.