Call for a national vaccination framework to standardise jab delivery

A national vaccination framework is needed to make sure pharmacy vaccine delivery looks the ‘same everywhere in the country’, a sector leader has said.

Speaking to the House of Lords Childhood Vaccinations Committee, the Company Chemists’ Association’s (CCA) head of policy Dr Nick Thayer called for a more standardised approach to vaccinations in pharmacies.

Giving evidence to the committee on Monday, Dr Thayer said the challenge was making sure there was consistency and not unwarranted variation between different parts of the country.

He added: ‘What we need is a national framework for vaccines. When a pharmacy is delivering a vaccine, it should look the same everywhere in the country, and I think that's really important.

‘The challenge is going to be making sure there’s consistency across the country when vaccination happens at a regional or even a local level.

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'What we don’t want to see is unwarranted variation between different parts of the country.’

The committee evidence session also explored how community pharmacy could play a bigger role in administering childhood vaccinations and the need for better data systems.

Dr Thayer noted that around 90% of community pharmacies now provide NHS adult flu vaccinations but only about 30% delivered childhood flu jabs last winter.

This gap, he suggested, shows significant untapped potential for pharmacies to support routine childhood vaccination if commissioning and funding were designed to be stable and consistent.

This echoes calls from the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) for the NHS to commission pharmacies to provide vaccines for school age children to combat a ‘dangerous and growing wave of vaccine hesitancy’.

Dr Thayer also praised pharmacies for delivering ‘outreach' vaccinations and helping to reach population groups where uptake is low, but also warned that this outreach activity costs extra money.

He said: ‘There's been some good examples of pharmacies doing outreach activity at local mosques or community centres, and that's really effective at reaching certain population groups.

‘One of the challenges with this is that outreach activity costs extra, and it can be difficult for a business to take that on if they're not sure that they'll make the return on that.

'There's a risk of it becoming a loss‑leading activity, and with pharmacy funding going where it is, that's not something that pharmacies can easily choose to do.’

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While the community pharmacy will receive a £340 million boost under the new contract, pharmacists have raised concerns they will see very little of this due to rising business rates, national minimum wage and inflationary costs.

Dr Thayer explained that during the Covid pandemic pharmacies were given ring-fenced funding for outreach vaccinations, which overcame some of these issues.

‘During the pandemic, there was a core offer available to all pharmacies and then ring‑fenced funding for additional outreach activity – so pharmacies could say “I'm going to do my basic offer, and I want some funding to do an extra thing for this group”.

'I've not seen many examples of that for routine vaccines, but I think it would be really interesting to see,’ Dr Thayer said.

He also spoke about the confusing ‘stop-start’ nature of vaccine commissioning and pilot projects, which make it difficult for the public to understand what pharmacies offer.

He said: ‘Pilots show that something is possible, but it doesn’t show what it could do – I think that’s an important distinction to make.

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‘If you pilot something and pharmacies deliver that vaccine programme for six months, it doesn’t show what would happen if you let it be for a few years and people got used to it and know what it is.

‘Pilots should be used to prove feasibility, not to prove benefit, and I think that's been mixed up at the moment.’

The committee also heard that the National Booking Service is not integrated with other pharmacy IT platforms, creating additional admin for staff.