The move by the NHS community pharmacy sector to bolster its clinical offer to patients by expanding into hypertension case-finding and smoking cessation services is a welcome development, but the wider crisis in primary healthcare provision remains.
From October, more than 11,000 pharmacies which have signed up to the ‘community pharmacy contractual framework’ (CPCF) – a five-year deal already agreed by NHS England (NHSE), the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) and the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) – will offer the first of these services, providing blood-pressure checks to people aged 40 and over, under the mantle of hypertension case-finding.
According to NHSE, this service simply involves a free blood-pressure check as part of a 10-15 minute consultation with a trained member of the pharmacy team, following which patients “may be invited to take home a blood-pressure monitor” to take further readings, or alternatively they may be referred on to a GP.
Full story in The Lowdown, 26 August 2021