The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7243 p465
5 April 2003

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Second wave of LPS pilots start

New local pharmaceutical services (LPS) pilots have started in London and Manchester.

Green Light Pharmacy, in Camden, north London, is providing 300 patients from the Bangladeshi community with pharmaceutical services around coronary heart disease and diabetes.

Pharmacist Tim O'Donoghue told The Journal that this includes a translation service, monitoring and counselling. "LPS has been a spark to give good credibility for primary care on the high street," he commented. Key clinical data will be shared with other primary and secondary care providers involved in the care of individual patients. "The secondary care diabetes specialists at UCL hospital have been particularly supportive of the concept," he adds.

The Olde Pharmacy, in Wandsworth, south London, is providing services under a unique arrangement which allows it to operate an LPS pilot and retain its existing national pharmacy contract. Medication review and patient monitoring services are to be provided primarily to elderly patients referred by local general practitioners and registered at the pharmacy. Patients who receive only medication review services can have their prescriptions dispensed wherever they want, but patients whose treatment is monitored at the pharmacy can only have their prescriptions dispensed there.

Lara Laundon, one of two joint proprietors of the Olde Pharmacy, said: "The LPS pilot offers us a new way of working and tackling the pharmaceutical needs of patients without having to be constrained by concerns about remuneration related to changes in dispensing volumes since these have been agreed up front with the PCT."

Both these LPS pilots were approved in the second wave of applications.

In the north of England, a first wave LPS scheme also came into operation on 1 April. The three Manchester PCTs have started a scheme involving 10 pharmacies across the city with three different levels of service. At the first level is intervention monitoring, aimed at reducing waste, optimising doses and synchronising prescribing. The second level involves helping patients take their medication correctly, with assessments of compliance aids that might be needed and home visits. The third level, which will not start until pharmacists have been trained for it, is medication reviews.