The Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) has called for GPs to “refer more patients into Pharmacy First” as C+D analysis of data it released last week (April 30) shows a modest 11% rise in “eligible” consultations over the first two months of the service.
According to the CCA, a fifth of its members’ Pharmacy First consultations came from GP referrals and 6% of consultations were referred from the NHS 111 service over the period.
“While these figures should rise with time, there is an urgent need to ensure these referral routes work optimally so all those patients who need to can access care for any of the seven conditions,” it said.
Announcing the new figures, CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison said that Pharmacy First “continues to show immense promise”.
But he added that GP surgeries needed “targeted support” to encourage them to make more referrals into the service.
Harrison also called on NHS England (NHSE) to provide more “high-quality and targeted engagement campaigns” to encourage the public to use the service more.
A CCA spokesperson told C+D that it had seen a “strong start” to Pharmacy First, with “a clear patient demand for the service”.
Eligible patients rise modestly
According to its data, the “3,000+” English pharmacies run by CCA members delivered 92,384 Pharmacy First consultations in the first two months of the service.
Of these appointments, 81,627 people were deemed to have met the gateway criteria and therefore be “eligible” for the service – representing 88% of the total.
Figures provided by the CCA show that members saw an average of 1,274 patients per day meeting eligibility criteria in the service’s first month – a period it defined as between January 31 and March 3.
Between March 4 and March 31 – defined as the service’s second month – this rose to 1,414 patients per day who met the gateway criteria, according to C+D’s calculations.
This indicates that between the first period and the second period, eligible appointments increased by 11%.
Public awareness “critical” to meeting threshold
Meanwhile, C+D calculated that CCA members had averaged at most 14 “eligible” consultations per pharmacy between Pharmacy First’s launch and March 3, assuming that membership is at least 3,000 pharmacies in England.
Between March 4 and March 31, the average across its members was, at most, 13 “eligible” consultations in the period.
However, the CCA could not provide C+D with exact numbers of the pharmacies run by its members in England.
And a spokesperson said that it was unable to distinguish between online and in-person Pharmacy First consultations since it “anonymizes and aggregates member data”.
The CCA spokesperson told C+D that “NHSE promotional campaigns” were needed to raise “patient awareness”.
This will be “critical to hitting the threshold targets later in the year,” they said, adding that the CCA is also “keeping a close eye on the impact of seasonality”.
A strong start?
Earlier in April, the Pharmacists’ Defense Association (PDA) said that minimum activity thresholds for Pharmacy First consultations had led to “increasing pressure from…management” though comparison “league tables”.
