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Pharmacy First
Public Health Local Service Agreements
LPC Recruitment Opportunity
Devon Weight Management
Information Governance Toolkit
Issue No: 93 March 2015
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Smoking Cessation (Devon CC only
Talking Politics – Community Pharmacy Manifesto
Cranbrook Pharmacy
EPS Timely Claiming of Reimbursement
Returned Sharps Waste
Pharmacy First Services
“Pharmacy First” services including minor ailments via PGDs, winter ailments and emergency
supply services continue to go from strength to strength. The minor ailments service covers six
items, all of which are supplied under PGD (chloramphenicol 0.5% eye
drops, fusidic acid 1% eye drops, fusidic acid 2% cream, nystatin oral
suspension, Timodine cream and trimethoprim 200mg tablets. The
winter ailments service formulary includes a longer list of items and
promotes self-care.
The initial pilot was due to end in March 2015; because of the positive
results to date they have been extended to at least the end of June 2015 while we carry out a full
evaluation together with the two CCGs and NHSE. We are in discussions with the CCGs about
continuing Pharmacy First to the end of March 2016 which is very encouraging news and means
that patients will become more used to being able to access the services from their local
pharmacy.
The latest figures (November 2014 - February 2015) show that 141 pharmacists are providing the
services. The total number of patients seen by pharmacy for these services is 4551; (by CCG Area
East and North Devon 2,542; Torbay and South Devon 2,009).
Split by service
 PGD Services
 Winter Ailments
 Emergency Supply
Reported patient action if no service
available
 Contact GP practice
 Contact OOH
 Visit A&E/Urgent Care
 Other
1347
2370
834
2146
729
107
1569
GP referrals have risen to 10% of attendances, and word of mouth also accounts for 10% of
attendances. This latter is indicating a behavioural change since the start of the services as they
become more widely known and embedded into practice. The LPC will be presenting on the
services at a forthcoming event facilitated by NHS IQ and NHSE to look at the sustainability of
these and other services funded via the Prime Ministers Challenge Fund and also a Primary Care
Strategy day at the end of April.
Pharmacy First resources, an up to date list of pharmacies providing the services and other
information may be found on our website http://devonlpc.org/locally-commissionedservices/devon-lpc-locally-commissioned-services/. If you are signed up to Pharmacy First please
continue to promote the services to your customers, it’s so important to keep the momentum
going – thank you.
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Public Health Local Service Agreements (Devon County Council and Torbay Council)
You will have all by now received or should have received a letter from your local authority
offering a six month extension to the existing contracts held to deliver the public health services
commissioned from community pharmacy. If you have not already done so, please ensure that
the acknowledgement and public health service summary sheets have been signed and return to
your relevant public health services contact without further delay. It is also important to ensure
that your activity records are up to date on PharmOutcomes particularly coming up to the end of
the financial year.
LPC Recruitment Opportunity
Healthy Living Pharmacy Co-Ordinator (Plymouth)
Working one day a week (two sessions of four hours) and reporting directly to the Chief Officer
you will be a real champion for the Healthy Living Pharmacy (HLP) programme in the Plymouth
area and encourage and support pharmacies to progress to become accredited HLPs. Managing
the day to day activity of the HLP programme in Plymouth, including the establishment and
delivery of suitable leadership and training events that meet the needs of contractors and their
teams.
You will work in support of the Chief Officer and LPC Consultant Pharmacist to develop the HLP
model further, facilitate commissioning of services through the HLP format and where appropriate
work in partnership with other relevant organisations and training providers to achieve the best
outcomes for the local population.
The role will be on a sessional basis of 2 x four hourly sessions each week for 12 months initially.
Salary in the range of 8b Agenda for Change (circa £120 per session depending on previous
experience). This could be a secondment if agreed with current employer. Interested? Please
send your CV and a covering letter setting out why you would like to take on this role to Sue
Taylor, Chief Officer, Devon LPC, Deer Park Business Centre, Haldon Hill, Kennford, Exeter EX6 7XX
no later than 24th April 2015.
Devon Weight Management Service
Patients living within the Devon County Council boundary can be referred to the new Tier 1 or
Tier 2 Weight Management services via the Healthy Lifestyles Hub operated by Health Promotion
Devon. A small number of community pharmacies have been commissioned to provide the
service in Devon; Leaflets to assist health professionals referring patients to the Devon Weight
Management Service (tiers 1 and 2) are now available and a copy is included with this newsletter
for your information. A supply of the leaflets will be mailed out to all GP surgeries and pharmacies
in Devon over the next few weeks.
Additionally, for useful resources and tools for professionals, please visit the Devon Health and
Wellbeing website at the link below:
http://www.devonhealthandwellbeing.org.uk/library/prof/community-based-weight-managementprogramme-tiers-1-and-2/
Information governance (IG) Toolkit
Community pharmacies have been granted an Exemption from the business continuity
requirements within the Information Governance (IG) Toolkit for 2014/15.
You still need to complete the rest of the Toolkit by 31 st March 2015. Guidance is available on
the PSNC website psnc.org.uk/ig including frequently asked questions and a template business
continuity plan.
Smoking Cessation (Devon County Council service only)
The public health team at Devon County Council has been working to simplify the Pharmoutcomes
process for the smoking cessation services for the financial year 2015-16. To date, data has been
recorded using a five stage entry process. Now that smoking cessation does not have a target set
against it this has provided an opportunity to make it easier for pharmacies to record and enter. A
simplified system of just three stages has been designed:
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Data entry when a client enters the smoking cessation pathway (recruitment data)
Data entry when a client has been followed up after 28 days and know the outcome of the quit
attempt is known.
Data entry when NRT has been issued to the client at any point in their pathway.
NRT- using the voucher scheme still exists as a separate process. This is for NRT dispensed for
other trained advisers such as school nurses.
There will be a cross-over period when both systems are still live on Pharmoutcomes to allow
entry of follow up data for clients that have set a quit date up to 31st March 2015. These will have
to go into the 2014-15 version. The supporting paperwork for pharmacies accredited to smoking
cessation will be available via Pharmoutcomes. (e.g. new monitoring form, nrt log, letter of
request to GP for champix etc.) and hopefully your team will find these less complicated than
previously.
The Public Health team will be alerting pharmacies to this change via the Pharmoutcomes
homepage; we would like to remind you of the importance of checking the messages on
PharmOutcomes regularly to prevent members of the pharmacy team missing out on important
information.
Talking Politics - Community Pharmacy Manifesto
The February newsletter highlighted the Community Pharmacy Manifesto which was launched in
November 2014 by the All Party Pharmacy Group. The manifesto calls for politicians to sign up to
five key pledges detailed below and is a joint campaign by PSNC, Pharmacy Voice and the
Independent Pharmacy Federation (IPF).
As the election campaign hots up, use the Community Pharmacy Manifesto to engage your local
MPs and parliamentary candidates. Visit www.pharmacymanifesto.com for a template letter. The
website also contains guidance on identifying and liaising with your local representatives and you
can pledge your own support on the website. http://pharmacymanifesto.com/how-can-you-takeaction/. If you’d like some help with this please contact the secretariat office.
The five key pledges
1. We will encourage patients to think pharmacy first and we will use pharmacy to help relieve
pressure on GPs and emergency departments
2. We will improve patient choice and healthcare by making it easier to commission pharmacy
services and backing more national services
3. We will help improve the public’s health, recognising the accessibility and support community
pharmacy can provide.
4. We will enable patients especially those with long term conditions to get more from their
medicines through better use of community pharmacy
5. We will help pharmacies to get access to the records and information they need to provide more
effective and safer care to patients.
If you and your pharmacy team get involved in this way and are able to arrange a visit from a MP,
parliamentary or council candidate please let us know – we’d love it if you could post a photo onto
our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DevonLPC
Cranbrook Pharmacy
Congratulations to Ali Hayes who opened her new pharmacy at Cranbrook, Exeter. This is a
new town development on the outskirts of Exeter so a very exciting venture for Ali, who already
owns Pines Pharmacy in Exmouth.
EPS Prescriptions – Timely Claiming of Reimbursement
EPS is continuing to grow at a great pace and now there are over 50% of GP practices live, and
97% of pharmacies. There are over 14 million nominations for patients in England; this is around
26% of the population!
Your pharmacy teams are getting used to handling two processes for prescription dispensing,
endorsing and claiming. One issue that seems to be coming up in Devon is the number of
pharmacies that are not claiming for reimbursement of EPS prescriptions every month regularly.
This will cause problems to your businesses performance, but also runs the risk of losing the
remittance to your pharmacy altogether, as EPS prescriptions will be deleted by the spine 6
months after the dispense notification is sent to the spine. So please ensure you send your claim
notifications regularly each month.
Electronic Prescription Tracker
Please follow the link below to access the updated version of the tracker;
http://systems.hscic.gov.uk/eps/library/rxtracker
Returned Sharps Waste (e.g. Out of Date Epipens)
We have heard reports of patients being directed to community pharmacies to dispose of used
needles or sharps used, e.g. out of date Epipens
Essential service 3 ‘Disposal of Unwanted Drugs’ does not impose an obligation on pharmacies to
accept sharps (the needle and syringe programmes are a locally commissioned service). Before
accepting patients own sharps, pharmacy contractors should ensure that they have suitable
arrangements for their disposal. Locally disposal of needles and sharps does not form part of the
NHSE pharmaceutical waste collection service and patients should be given the number of the
local environmental health department to arrange collection.
If a patient is storing sharps at their home you can direct the patient to their surgery to arrange
supply of a FP10 for a sharps bin.
East Devon District Council
Tel: 01395 571515
South Hams District Council
Tel: 01803 861234
Plymouth City Council
Tel: 01752 668000
Exeter City Council
Tel: 01392 665010
Torridge District Council
Tel: 01237 428734
Torbay Council
Tel: 01803 701316
CONTACT DETAILS FOR DEVON LPC
Chief Officer: Sue Taylor
Project Pharmacist: Mark Stone
Office Manager: Kathryn Jones
Deer Park Business Centre,
Haldon Hill, Kennford,
EXETER EX6 7XX
Tel: 01392 834022
www.devonlpc.org
Mid Devon District Council
Tel: 01884 255255
Teignbridge District Council
Tel: 01626 215838
North Devon District Council
Tel: 01271 374776
West Devon Borough Council
01837 659309
If you are interested in attending an LPC meeting as an
observer, please contact the Secretariat on 01392 834022.
Details of all forthcoming events can be found on the events
page of Devon LPC website www.devonlpc.co.uk