Local Leicestershire Resources

Local Leicestershire Resources

Community Pharmacy Leicestershire & Rutland (your LPC) identified some local teething issues with the pilot study and so produced supplementary advice and resources to assist local Extended Care Pharmacists (ECPs) and surgeries wishing to refer patients into the service.

1) Confused Surgeries? – it became apparent that some surgeries were mixing up referrals for Extended Care services with CPCS referrals.

We addressed this issue from the CPCS aspect and produced a CPCS Referral Guidance tool to support surgery reception teams.

We also recommend the following definitions when explaining the key differences between the two services to surgery staff.

CPCS Qualifying Conditions – all typically treated with over-the-counter medicines (OTCs)

Ext.Care Qualifying Conditions – all typically treated with Prescription Only Medicines (POMs) This means only ECPs can provide these Extended Care services since considerable additional study and accreditations are required to lawfully supply a POM under a Patient Group Direction (PGD)

2) Tier 1 Referral Guidance – until now surgery reception teams would refer all UTI symptoms, both ‘complicated’ and ‘uncomplicated’, to a GP. Thus we developed an innovative Guide with a green list of uncomplicated UTI symptoms alongside a red list of complicated UTI symptoms. Reception teams are finding this really helpful so print a few copies for them and explain to them how to use it.