Government looking at medicine supervision changes in pharmacies to ‘free up GP appointments’

The Government is considering changes to medicine supervision requirements to allow the provision of more clinical services in pharmacies and free up GP appointments.

Ministers said that the new proposals would allow pharmacists to ‘safely delegate more’ and so ‘spend more time delivering patient-facing clinical services’, in turn ‘freeing up more appointments’ in general practice.

Currently, the preparation, assembly, dispensing, sale and supply of pharmacy and prescription-only medicines can be carried out only by a pharmacist, or under their supervision.  

Following a 12-week consultation which was launched today and subsequent work by regulators and professional bodies, a pharmacist would be able to authorise pharmacy technicians to run a dispensary with reference to a pharmacist ‘only where necessary’.

Pharmacy technicians are registered and regulated health professionals, qualified to work without direct supervision, the consultation pointed out.

Primary care minister Andrea Leadsom said: ‘This is about making the most of the talents of our excellent and highly trained pharmacy staff, to benefit them and their patients, and improve service delivery more generally.

‘By giving pharmacy technicians the chance to use their skills in a safe way and take on more responsibility for dispensing, pharmacists will have more time to carry out the clinical assessments they are trained to do.

‘These include providing advice on oral contraception, common conditions and blood pressure tests rather than patients having to book an appointment at a general practice.’

The Doctors’ Association UK GP spokesperson Dr Steve Taylor told Pulse that ‘deregulation seems to be the Government’s response to its failures’ to fund, recruit and retain staff.

He said: ‘Years of training, safeguards, and experience are being dismantled rapidly. Here is another example. The laws are there for a reason, and that reason is patient safety.

‘Using pharmacy technicians will no doubt be cheaper but this will not be safer. Safe, knowledgeable, effective care costs.

‘I’m sure our pharmacist colleagues would agree, although the corporate big chains will want cheaper labour for better profit margins. I hope the consultation is well represented.’

Doncaster LMC chief executive Dr Dean Eggitt said: ‘While pharmacy technicians undertake a lot of training, their understanding of medicines is not comparable to that of pharmacists.

‘I support the need to free up pharmacist time and would encourage the Government to explore robotic hub and spoke dispensing as the mechanism of doing this. It’s reliable, safe, and efficient.’

Dr Jay Verma, president of the GP Section at the Royal Society of Medicine, said it is important to increase capacity in pharmacies to help meet patient demand.

He said: ‘GPs and pharmacies are the front line of primary care in the UK and just as GPs have other healthcare professionals, we should look at ways of giving pharmacists that support as well.

‘However, if technicians do have greater responsibility, they should get the training and support to ensure both they and the patients are safe and ultimately, any queries should be passed to the pharmacist in overall charge.’

Dr Emma Nash, a GP in Hampshire and mental health lead at Southampton, Hampshire & Isle of Wight ICB, said: ‘I think that pharmacy techs doing more in a dispensary is fine – dispensing practices work that way, with a GP on hand as needed – but whether it will free up GP appointments is something I’m not so sure about.

‘Unless there’s some stipulation that a certain amount of NHS primary care work is done, then I doubt this will make much of a difference.

‘In addition, the kind of things that pharmacists tend to help with are those which appear on the duty list – this is increasingly run by advanced practitioners, so won’t necessarily have much of an impact on actual GP appointments.’

The consultation follows the Government’s announcements around the Pharmacy First scheme, which will launch on 31 January 2024, subject to the ‘appropriate digital systems being in place’ to support the services.

Community pharmacies across England will be able to opt in to provide a ‘common conditions’ service as part of the scheme and GP Connect is to add a functionality for pharmacists to automatically update medical records, without additional action from the patient’s GP.

Following the scheme’s announcement, the Doctors’ Association UK urged the Government to urgently review why pharmacies are paid ‘more than double’ per consultation compared with GPs.

And GPs told Pulse they believed that the Pharmacy First money would be better off spent in general practice.