NHS Direct pharmacy referrals may be introduced nation-wide if the Essex pilot is successful (PJ, March 4, p356).
So said Mr Paul Jenkins (national project manager, NHS Direct) at the project launch on March 1. Mr Jenkins said that the project had provided an opportunity to formally harness the considerable skills of pharmacists as providers of a wide range of advice and medicines. It made it possible for callers to be provided with a more direct response than might previously have been possible, because they would no longer have to wait, possibly for a considerable time, if they were referred to a general medical practitioner.
Nurses at the Essex based pilot site of NHS Direct began referring patients to community pharmacies on March 1. Two of every seven algorithms in the decision support software used by the nurses have been changed so that they offer referral to a community pharmacist as one of the options that should be recommended. In all, the computer programme now offers nurses 182 opportunities to make pharmacy referrals. 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.
The impact on workload of the introduction of patient referrals to community pharmacists by NHS Direct is to be assessed by Sheffield university as part of its overall appraisal of the success of the telephone helpline. Mr Stephen Robinson (NHS Direct general manager for Essex, Barking and Havering) said that the assessment would include:
The introduction of pharmacy referral had been a collaborative project that had demanded a lot of effort, Mr Robinson went on. The algorithms had been reviewed by a team from Keele university, headed by Professor Alison Blenkinsopp, and NHS Direct nurses and local pharmacists had been trained over a number of months.
Expressing optimism for the impact of the pilot, Mr Robinson said: "We are hoping that this project will represent a milestone in the development of NHS direct and the whole health care community."
Others involved with the development of the pharmacy referral pilot include the Essex and Barking and Havering local pharmaceutical committees, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the National Pharma- ceutical Association and the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education.