Medicines Management
Issue no 6, p4
November/December 2002

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GPs question value of community pharmacy-based medicines management

General practitioners are not yet convinced of the benefits that might come from community pharmacists taking on medicines management within their own pharmacies.

At a meeting on medicines management pilots, organised by Gedling Primary Care Trust in Nottingham, GPs said it would be better for patients to attend a specific venue, rather than several different ones.

It was questioned whether patients visiting a number of different pharmacists would confound the partnership work currently developing in medicines management programmes.

One GP commented that medicines management would be better focused on general practice, partly to benefit the primary care team but also for the patient, who would know that one place was taking charge of his or her care.

In addition, there was concern that if medicines management was undertaken by pharmacists within the pharmacy, there might be a lack of coordination between patient histories taken by pharmacists and patient notes already existing on GPs' computer systems.

However, Professor Clare Mackie, head of the Centre for Partnerships in Medicines for Health at Aberdeen's Robert Gordon University, criticised existing GP case notes, saying they were useless to inform medicines management.

She added: "We have to produce a patient summary. It is not a duplication of effort because at the moment it just doesn't exist."

Professor Mackie explained that the pharmacist's patient summary could be printed off and put into a GP's case notes. "It will add something, rather than duplicate effort."

She also highlighted that many GP surgeries currently do not have the capacity for medicines management services and that patients being targeted for this intervention were those most likely to visit the same community pharmacist.

Hemant Patel, secretary to the north east London local pharmaceutical committee, said it was important to take account of patient preferences. "In Barking and Havering we offer a choice to patients. We ask them where they want the service to be provided — at the community pharmacy, the GP surgery or at home."

Mark Pilling, National Prescribing Centre development manager, agreed that choice was important and said the focus should be on individual patients and the needs of local populations, not on community pharmacies or general practitioners.