Sadik-Al-Hassan: National pharmacy prescribing service “entirely possible”

A national prescribing service for pharmacists could in theory be developed in the next two-three years according to Sadik-Al-Hassan MP.

Speaking at an event organised by PharmaTech in parliament on Wednesday, Hassan said community pharmacists had the skillset to prescribe but a national service would be “limited” by what they are currently allowed to do.

“If a community pharmacy sees an error on a prescription, they will have to phone up the prescriber and ask for a new prescription even though the pharmacist already knows what is wrong and what should be right - this leads to the question of the natural boundary of the profession,” said Hassan.

“The delivery of a national pharmacy-based prescribing service, I believe is entirely possible, I believe it's deliverable, but I believe it's limited now by what we do currently and it shouldn't be.”

As a pharmacist himself, Hassan is aware that community pharmacies have the capability to play integral role in primary care.

“A pharmacy prescribing service could include prescribing decisions based on somebody's genome. The tech isn't that far away,” he said.

“We could actually have testing and understanding of pharmacogenomics, which means prescribing based on somebody's genetic profile.

“We will know which blood pressure medication is actually better than just knowing that your characteristics say a certain medicine will be best in that situation.”

Hassan urged pharmacies to embrace services rather than continuing to spend the majority of their time checking prescriptions and dispensing medicine.

With a team that’s often made up pharmacists, advanced clinical pharmacist, pharmacy technicians, and trainees/apprentices, Hassan believes community pharmacies have a duty to utilise the expertise and upskill their workforce.

“We need to seize the opportunity of the work that's available to us, that's sitting in backlogs of secondary care, that's sitting in new services, that's sitting in new ways to help patients,” he said.

“But all the while we need to have our eye on where pharmacy sits as a profession. Where are our professional boundaries? Where do we add value? And we have to be careful that isn't in the gaps of other people's professions, where we spread ourselves a little too thin.”

Santosh Sahu

Santosh Sahu, founder and CEO of Charac: The Pharmacy App, told attendees that an adequality funded community pharmacy sector had the capability to take the pressure of GPs.

“There are about 350 to 400 million appointments in the primary care network, 80 million of these appointments are about, ‘I don't know what's wrong with me’ (minor ailments),” he said.

“Imagine there is adequate funding and the right technology pathways between the primary care and pharmacies, 80 million of these appointments can be directed to the community pharmacy and it can release time in the GP surgeries where they can attend to people who most require their attention.”

Sahu added: “Pharmacists need technology to free their time so that they can get their head up and think like a business person to do other services. Is government and NHS doing enough for them to do this?”