Pharmacy First will put community pharmacy ‘under the microscope’, according to Alastair Buxton, director of NHS Services for Community Pharmacy England (CPE).
Mr Buxton was speaking in a recent CPE webinar – called Pharmacy First: Getting to know the service – to help pharmacists prepare ahead of the scheme’s scheduled launch on 31 January 2024.
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Referring specifically to monitoring and stewardship of the scheme’s impact on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), Mr Buxton said he was confident that community pharmacy ‘will do all of that properly’, but added: ‘I think we do need to recognise that we will be under the microscope with this service.’
Last month, NHS England warned that pharmacists could be suspended from delivering Pharmacy First if concerns over AMR and patient safety emerge.
Also speaking in the CPE webinar was England’s chief pharmaceutical officer, David Webb, who said services would need to ‘work together to deliver the new services successfully, and ensure the uptake the NHS is aiming for’.
Mr Webb added: ‘There are various figures quoted but there’s a potential channel shift of around eight million people from general practice into community pharmacy if we get this right.’
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Echoing comments in his end of year letter, Mr Webb said Pharmacy First represented a ‘pivotal moment for community pharmacy to step more fully into its clinical future, and that future is as part of an integrated NHS primary care team’.
He also described the scheme as ‘an illumination of the pathway we want to go along in terms of key professional initiatives such as independent prescribing by pharmacists’.
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The webinar was one in a series organised by CPE to help pharmacists prepare for the new scheme.
In an earlier webinar, Mr Buxton described Pharmacy First as a ‘step into the unknown’.
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