Nurses at the Essex based pilot site of the NHS Direct telephone helpline began referring patients to community pharmacies on March 1. Of the 250 algorithms in the decision support software used by the nurses, 68 have been changed to lead to a pharmacy recommendation. In all, the computer programme now offers nurses 182 opportunities to make pharmacy referrals.
Community pharmacists in the area have been trained over the past few months so that they know the type of referrals which they are likely to receive. Many of these would have previously been directed to general medical practitioners. Of the 16,000 calls per week to the Essex site, 2,000 used to result in GP referrals.