Pharmacy First Service Announcement & Webinars – Book Now!

Community Pharmacy England has reached agreement with Government and the NHS on the launch of a new national Pharmacy First service as well as other changes to pharmacy funding and services.

CPE agreed to accept the deal which sets out how the £645 million investment pledged within the Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care will be used to support community pharmacy services.

Under the agreement, a new Pharmacy First service which includes providing advice and NHS-funded treatment, where appropriate, for seven common conditions will be launched on 31st January 2024 (subject to the required IT systems being in place) as an Advanced Service.

UPDATE: The service specification and clinical pathways have now been published this service.

UPDATE: NHS England has also published drafts of the 23 PGDs and one protocol for the Pharmacy First service

The service involves providing consultations to give advice and NHS-funded treatment (via Patient Group Directions), where appropriate, for seven common conditions (clinical pathways consultations). The consultations can be provided to patients who self-refer to the pharmacy (e.g. walk-ins) as well as those referred by NHS 111, GPs and others.

The Pharmacy First service will also incorporate the existing Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (CPCS). Pharmacies will be paid £15 per consultation

The seven common conditions included within this service are sore throat, infected insect bites, sinusitis, shingles, earache, uncomplicated UTI in women and impetigo. PGDs will be in place to enable pharmacists to supply Prescription-Only Medicines (POMs) to treat these conditions.

From the 1st December 2023 contractors will be able to sign up to deliver the service. All pharmacies that sign up will receive an initial payment of £2000.

Please note: in order to keep this payment you are required to deliver a minimum of 5 clinical pathway consultations before 31st march 2024

From February 2024, in addition to the £15 consultation fee, a monthly fixed payment of £1,000 will be paid to pharmacy owners who meet a minimum activity threshold of clinical pathways consultations (the threshold will increase over time as set out below).

Month	Minimum number of clinical pathways consultations
February 2024	1
March 2024	5
April 2024	5
May 2024	10
June 2024	10
July 2024	10
August 2024	20
September 2024	20
October 2024 onwards	30

 

CPE Webinar:  Pharmacy First and the Recovery plan –  Watch on-demand
Earlier this week CPE hosted an introductory webinar around the new Pharmacy First service and other upcoming. Click here to watch this on-demand. 

CPE: Implementing Pharmacy First: Webinar series – Click the links below to book your place
CPE will be hosting a series of webinars to help pharmacy teams prepare for the new Pharmacy First service, and changes to the Contraception and Hypertension Case-Finding Services.

• Pharmacy Contraception Service: Initiating contraception (Tues 5th Dec, 7-8.30pm)
• Pharmacy First: Getting to know the service (Wed 13th Dec, 7-8.30pm)
• Hypertension Case-Finding Service (Wed 3rd Jan, 7-8.30pm)
• Pharmacy Contraception Service: getting going with the service (Wed 10th Jan, 7-8.30pm)
• Pharmacy First: Getting ready for launch (Mon 15th Jan 7-8.30pm)

A number of briefings on the announcement are now available:

• Recovery Plan agreement and FAQs for pharmacy owners and LPCs
• Funding for Pharmacy First, and other funding-related changes in the Recovery Plan deal

Further information is available via CPE’s dedicated webpage

 

CPPE Support
CPPE has published learning resources to prepare and support pharmacy professionals.

• There is a detailed self-assessment framework document to support pharmacists to identify development areas to establish their competence. This also signposts to relevant learning to help fill knowledge gaps.
• There is also a copy of the pharmacy first service specification.

Further information will be added to this page in due course.