PCN Pharmacists – The Medacy Way

Investment in PCN Pharmacists is a great thing. The idea of the NHS investing significant chunks of money in clinical pharmacists would not have been on the agenda 10 years ago. It’s fantastic that they have finally “found” specialist resource experts in medications! If they had been looking more closely, they would have seen a whole profession jumping up and down every time an NHS challenge was identified. Especially one that that is medication-related.

My problem with the PCN model developed by NHS England is that it doesn’t address many of the acute challenges in Primary Care. The pharmacists who have been employed by PCNs are often poorly supported and poorly directed. They are employed at no risk to the GP Practices they are working for, and so the incentive to make sure they are delivering value for money has been removed. The focus has been on supporting Care Home Patients, which is great and a thing called Structured Medication Reviews (Who knew that we didn’t have a Structure before!) SMRs are nice to do but don’t reduce GP workload and address the shortage of GPs in many areas. I also think there is a serious issue of isolation. Being a pharmacist in a community pharmacy can be a lonely place as you are the only professional in the pharmacy. Being the only pharmacist in practice can feel the same, and if you are spread over 4-5 practice, this exacerbates the problem of isolation and not feeling like you belong anywhere.

PCN Pharmacist replacing the experienced practice Pharmacists

There is also another issue regarding Clinical Pharmacists who have been employed by forward-thinking practices in the past. These practices, who have been at the forefront of the re-balancing of primary care workload, are missing out of the Clinical Pharmacist funding. This is because they were included in the initial headcount and PCN funding can’t pay for the legacy clinical pharmacist. The disturbing thing is that I hear increasingly, that practices are trying to get rid of an experienced clinical pharmacist to get a freebie! How can this be right?

So, we are agreed that PCN Pharmacists are a great idea; they are just not setting the world alight, so what can we do? We need a much more flexible, bespoke approach.

We need to speed up the Clinical Pharmacist pathway training so the Pharmacist can make a difference in practice much more quickly. I think they need to focus on the everyday tasks in practice that will free up GP time and I think they need to be properly supported by a senior pharmacist or another clinician. We need some key performance indicators to make sure the NHS is getting good value for money, and we need to create an environment where clinical pharmacists feel they belong and flourish. Oh wait, we already have a service that fits the bill!

PCN Pharmacists – Medacy’s answer.

Medacy provides a unique, fully managed, pharmacist-led clinical service to individual GP practices, PCNs and CCGs. The service we provide is bespoke to each client and is delivered by experienced Independent Prescribing Pharmacists who can hit the ground running on day one in practice making a difference straight away to GP workload and outcomes for patients.

Call Medacy on 01677 252205 to see how we can help you realise the full potential of clinical pharmacist support without waiting for 2-3 years for a pharmacist to complete the training pathway and Independent Prescribing course.