Community pharmacy teams are urged to share their views relating to the new NHS Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS).
“This will ensure that the tool supports the needs of pharmacy team members and their patients,” said the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC).
BaRS is an interoperability standard for healthcare IT systems which should enable booking and referral information to be sent to or from care providers, such as community pharmacies, quickly, safely and in a format useful to clinicians.
“The intentions are that the BaRS IT standard will eventually be available in all care settings. The way the standard could be used in pharmacies is currently being considered, including the potential for use for referrals from NHS 111 to community pharmacy.”
The BaRS team are conducting interviews (usually lasting 30-45 minutes) to hear more the current experiences and the future preferences regarding sending and receiving referral messages.
The BaRS team would like to hear the view of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, dispensers and pharmacy counter assistants. To date, their feedback has just been from pharmacists. It is expected the interviews will be conducted from mid-September.
