Background

The Birmingham and Black Country Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) requested our help with managing locally commissioned community pharmacy services. Several schemes were prioritised: Pharmacy First, COVID-19 Urgent Eye Care service, Specialist Palliative Care Drugs service and the Intravenous Antibiotic Supply service.

Action

• Produced several service documents and engaged with local key stakeholders
• Ensured service delivery was in line with the specification
• Contractor payments and payment queries were managed appropriately and on time
• Implemented an audit and reporting structure to demonstrate the quality and cost saving
• Automated services onto a digital platform to improve payment, reporting, audit and efficacy

Impact

We helped Black Country CCGs to set up and maintain a successful new Minor Ailments service under the name of ‘Pharmacy First’.

Over 300 pharmacies across the Black Country and Birmingham provide the service monthly covering GPs with a combined population of 1.46 million patients.

Compared to previous financial year, 18,931 Pharmacy First consultations (86.1%) were found to have freed up capacity across GP, A&E and walk-in services.

This was confirmed by audit data which showed that had the scheme not been available, patients would have booked a GP appointment. Community pharmacy in this case represents better ‘health value’ when comparing utilisation of skillsets and costs of community pharmacy services with costs for a GP appointment.