Surgery Support Resources
The Pharmacy First service provides surgery Reception Teams with extra referral options for patients with minor & less serious conditions. Patients receive a same-day consultation with their local pharmacist which is quite often a quicker option, especially when GP appointments are scarce.
Pharmacy First builds on the previous Community Pharmacy Consultation Service (CPCS) so new Reception Team colleagues, perhaps unfamiliar with pharmacy referrals, will find it very useful to watch this short video introduction to making pharmacy referrals.
Introducing Pharmacy First: This introduction 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: Whereas 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.
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.