Title of Project:
A Collaborative Working Project between Pfizer Limited, The National Pharmacy Association, The Company Chemists’ Association Ltd and Gen X Media Ltd (trading as Pharmacy in Practice) to increase urgent access to medicines, vaccines and care through the network of community pharmacies across the UK
Background:
Following the Launch of Pharmacy First in England last year and aligning with similar projects in the devolved Nations the 2024 collaborative project between Pfizer Ltd, The National Pharmacy Association and Gen X Media (trading as Pharmacy in Practice), focused on developing a range of training and educational materials about the provision of treatments and vaccination services to patients, to optimise best practice within community pharmacy and bring benefits to patients and pharmacy consumers, in accordance with national guidelines.
The 2025 collaboration will see the National Pharmacy Association, Gen X Media (trading as Pharmacy in Practice) come together with The Company Chemists’ Association Ltd to expand the scope across the UK community pharmacy network, identifying innovative solutions to ease NHS pressures and building on the significant outcomes achieved from the 2024 project.
Project:
The focus in 2025 will be on urgent and alternative access to medicines, vaccines, and care, aligning with NHS priorities such as the Government’s 10 Year Health Plan. The goal is to reduce the strain on general practice and secondary care by offering additional patient options within the community pharmacy setting and outside traditional GP hours. This will all run alongside supporting the outputs of the 2024 project through all partners and reporting on their uptake and success.
The objective is to reduce the burden on general practice and secondary care by offering more patient options within community pharmacies beyond traditional GP hours. The group will explore practical steps for change, identify barriers and enablers, and highlight benefits for patients and the UK health and care services. The groundwork laid in 2024 will guide our efforts to implement and test new ideas.
Benefits:
Benefits to Patients and their Care
- Explore innovative solutions that provide easier access to services for patients and eases NHS pressures, building on our past achievements
- Improved awareness of additional medicines/vaccines and clinical services via materials made available through their local community pharmacy
- Improved choice of a range of treatments and clinical advice, including urgent care and vaccines through their community pharmacy
Benefits to the NHS
- Materials being developed for community pharmacists will align with national guidance and commitments made in the NHS Long Term Plan that aims to support GP and hospital services to focus on their post-pandemic recovery plans in their efforts to tackle patient backlogs
- Materials will promote the enhancement of best practice, with the aim of alleviating pressures on the health and care system and offering solutions to those health and care services that can more easily be delivered through community pharmacy
Benefits To Collaborative Parties
- The collaboration highlights CCA’s unique position to provide enhanced support and robust advocacy, by leading the transformation of community pharmacy, ensuring sustainable and impactful healthcare solutions for their communities.
- Enhance the national profile and amplify awareness of PiP’s capability to develop groundbreaking solutions to the challenges facing the NHS.
- The NPA will continue to elevate the profile of community pharmacy and the crucial role it plays within the healthcare environment. The outcomes of this collaboration will further empower independent community pharmacies to achieve a promising clinical future, catering to the health needs of their local communities
Benefits to Pfizer
- Increased understanding of how we improve patient access to our medicines/vaccines through community pharmacy
- Developing innovative educational and patient materials will enhance Pfizer’s reputation and support community pharmacy offer solutions, areas of best practice, and introduce innovative ways of working.
Outcomes:
Workstream 1 – Evolving the workstreams of the 2024 collaboration
The first workstream will build on the priority frameworks of the 5 workstreams developed during 2024 to continue to support Community Pharmacy to expand and enhance the delivery of clinical services, treatments and healthcare advice, by:
- Planning to support upskilling Independent Prescribers and seek to replicate the Pharmacy First Plus Scotland model – using NHS England’s Early Adopter Programme with rolling out NHS vaccination programmes across the community pharmacy setting in East of England and expanding across 200 other sites in England to address health inequalities and social deprivation.
- Deliver an Early Adopter programme for IP Micro-Credentialling.
- Carry out a review of the Workforce development resources to align with Health ecosystem changes, and
- Explore the expansion of the patient partnerships initiative with other patient groups following success of the 2024 UK Sepsis Trust patient partnership initiative and specifically for 2025 to explore with Meningitis Now a new partnership approach.
Workstream 2 – Increasing urgent access to medicines and care through the network of community pharmacies across the UK
- Conduct an ‘Urgent Care’ thought-leadership review to establish what community pharmacy could feasibly deliver
- Establish a Short-Life working group to extend Pharmacy First to include urgent care provisions and wider range of NHS vaccinations commissioned from more community pharmacies beyond the well-established flu and covid vaccination programmes.
- Improving relationships across Primary Care (GPs, Pharmacists, Nurses, Dentists, AHPs, etc) to explore ability to deliver an expanded Pharmacy First model, to include the potential for establishing a national community pharmacy smoking cessation service
- Promoting quality interventions to ensure consistency
The collaboration will be looking at this entire project through the lens of assisting to address and trying to reduce health inequalities and enhance urgent access to care in areas of need.
All materials created within the collaborative project are subject to Pfizer approval of distribution, during the life of the project timeframe but are free for use of the Collaborative partners on completion and thereafter close of the project.