Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has rolled out a patient-facing website that provides information regarding key services - Pharmacy First, hypertension case-finding (blood pressure check), and pharmacy contraception in England, and how to access them.
The website (communitypharmacy.org.uk) has separate page for each of the services, providing patients with information about the individual services and directing them to the NHS website to find a pharmacy that offers the service.
This website can also be used by other healthcare providers, such as GP practices and Local Pharmaceutical Committees (LPCs), to provide information on these services and pharmacies that offer them.
Pharmacy owners do not need to sign up to be listed on the website.
Patients have the right to choose any pharmacy for prescription dispensing and clinical services, and they are free to switch to another pharmacy.
The CPE claims the website was developed after some pharmacy owners and LPCs claimed that patients were being directed to a range of websites and apps that help them to identify a pharmacy service, but they do not provide many choices to the patients.
By directing patients to ‘Find a pharmacy’ tools on the NHS website, the patients will have many choices.
The CPE has also come up with template letters and other resources to help pharmacy teams promote the new website among the GPs.
