The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7351 p639
28 May 2005

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Some PCTs fail to engage with community pharmacists

A third of all primary care trusts are failing to engage with community pharmacists in terms of setting up local pharmacy-based pilot projects for new services, research suggests.

Health Direction, a health care business intelligence company, collected data from just over 300 PCTs in England to assess how pharmacy services are organised. It found that local pharmaceutical services pilots were being run in 15 per cent of PCTs. Other pharmacy development pilot projects were being run in just over half of PCTs (51 per cent) but work was only at the planning stage in the remaining 33 per cent.

The research also revealed that most PCTs use formularies (78 per cent) and, of these, half are formally assessing their use in the context of medicines management. No formulary was in place in the remaining 22 per cent of PCTs.