GP Practice and Reception Team Support Resources
Why is it important for practices to refer patients to Pharmacy First?
• To help with capacity in the practice so practice appointments can be used for patients who really need them
• To improve access for patients with minor illnesses. Patients receive a same day consultation with their preferred community pharmacist.
• To change patient behaviour so they go to community pharmacy as the ‘first port of call’ for minor illness and medicines advice
• To support the integration of community pharmacy into the PCN team
• To create improved relationships between practices and community pharmacies to deliver high quality and integrated care to patients
• To help patients self-manage their health more effectively with the support of community pharmacist
Introducing Pharmacy First: This training video is especially helpful for Reception Teams who are already familiar with CPCS referrals.
Referral Guidance: Pharmacy First – Minor Ailments: This Guide for Reception Teams is very similar to the CPCS referral guidance.
Referral Guidance: Pharmacy First – Seven Clinical Conditions This guide provides additional referral information for the seven conditions where pharmacists are allowed to supply prescription medicines.
The Introducing Pharmacy First video explains how best to uses these guides to stream minor symptoms to pharmacies, and it can be seen that symptoms related to the seven less serious common conditions have already been included in the original Minor Ailments referral guide, as indicated by the highlights.
In both cases patients with “green” symptoms can be referred to the pharmacist but any “red” symptoms must be considered by a clinician in the surgery. These referral documents are intended to ensure all surgery and pharmacy staff are ‘on the same pages’ with this service.
Pharmrefer and What ‘Good’ looks like from LLR ICB
The referral process for practices can be made more efficient using the PharmRefer app which is from Pinnacle, the following video clip shares how it works for the 95% of LLR practices using SystemOne. Whereas it is different for the half-dozen practices in Leicestershire/Rutland using the EMIS IT system. Click on this EMIS link which explains how the EMIS Local Services suite incorporates the CPCS referral functionally, and also see the embedded YouTube video link within it showing how EMIS Local Services is set up.
LLR ICB has provided a summary for practices of ‘what good looks like’ in this Slide
Multifactor Authentication (MFA)
The ICB has also prepared a Guide for practices to support installation of an MFA system, whilst the procedures of PharmRefer have provided this FAQ sheet.