Amish Patel talks about the Pharmacy First scheme

Transcript

00:00The NHS Pharmacy First service is definitely a great initiative. It frees up GP appointments

00:04and GPs can refer patients directly to the pharmacy to be seen. It's also a great way for

00:09us to triage patients in a way so if we can't treat them we can escalate it back to the GP

00:13in a timely manner. However, it definitely has its shortfalls and that is it is severely

00:19underfunded. So while it's a great service I can currently make a loss every time I'm

00:24delivering it each month and I will be deciding whether I continue with the service or whether

00:28they have to pull it all together. On this particular drug the clawback is 5% which means

00:33we actually get paid £34.76 for every packet we dispense of this drug. You'll see here the

00:39cheapest I can buy it for is £36.41 and that's actually out of stock. The cheapest one is £36.59.

00:46That's roughly a £2 loss every packet we dispense and just the other day I've ordered 50 packets

00:53so it's just crazy amounts of losses. Patients have pretty much engaged quite well across Kent

01:02with regards to this service. I think the key thing is around access that community pharmacies

01:07do bring to the system and the support community pharmacies have been giving our general practice

01:13colleagues really and interestingly enough referrals are coming from everywhere not just

01:18from GP practices so it's coming from NHS 111 online, NHS 111, UEC sites and other different

01:30clinical settings. In the long run this would then create more appointment time slots for people that

01:38really need them. So gone will be the days where we're still ringing our general practice up to

01:45try and get an appointment. If we can ease up some more appointment schedule so that more and

01:50more people can then have access to those appointments and move those services to

01:55those stable patients to where they can be looked after effectively closer to their home,

02:00that is the right model that will work well for all of us really that live in our individual communities.