Shutterstock.com
The development of access to GP patient records from community pharmacies is still in progress, despite initial plans for it to be available by the end of January 2024, NHS England has said.
Speaking at The Pharmacy Show in Birmingham on 13 October 2024, Ursa Alad, head of delivery, community pharmacy commissioning and digital strategy at NHS England, said the NHS is working with four community pharmacy suppliers to deliver the service, with one supplier live in “a few pharmacies”. However, she added that full access is “not quite there yet”.
“[The NHS’s] mission is that every pharmacist will be able to see the GP patient record from within their system, rather than have to log in to a separate system, using a smartcard, like you do at the moment,” she said.
“We have been hearing that pharmacists have been eagerly waiting for this. This has not been done before, no one else in the NHS has access — apart from the GPs themselves — to that information.”
“We’ve got some pharmacies in a pilot site that have been able to access this information,” Alad added, but was unable to provide further timescales for the rollout.
GP Connect enables authorised clinical staff to share and view GP practice clinical information and data between IT systems.
In October 2023, Tahmina Rokib, digital primary care clinical lead for community pharmacy at NHS England, announced that “dependent on negotiations”, community pharmacists could access medication, clinical investigation and observation information through GP Connect as part of ‘phase 1’ of a rollout to community pharmacies by the “end of January [2024]”.
Rokib confirmed that the rollout will occur in four pharmacy patient medication record systems: Positive Solutions, Cegedim Healthcare Solutions, Sonar Informatics and EMIS Health Community Pharmacy.
As part of the first phase of integration, community pharmacists will be also able to update patients’ clinical records through their pharmacy systems.
At The Pharmacy Show in October 2024, Alad highlighted that pharmacists currently “have access to the summary care record and national care record” when completing a Pharmacy First consultation, but access to GP records will “initially include any medications, observations and investigations”, with a second phase of access including “GP consultations and immunisations”.
A document from the Community Pharmacy IT Group, seen by The Pharmaceutical Journal on 24 October 2024, included that pharmacies will also have access to “uncategorised data”, such as observations, blood pressure and urine dip samples.
Commenting on the delayed access, Graham Stretch, president of the Primary Care Pharmacy Association, said: “It feels like we’ve made very little progress and its frustrating.
“We’re stuck in the starting blocks, raring to go, and without the connectivity, and the ability to read, write, it feels like we’re trying to practice with our hands tied behind our backs,” he said.
“So much of the ability to deliver Pharmacy First, and other services, depends on the ability to be able to check notes, blood tests, medicines, allergies, and a range of other crucial patient safety factors.
“And at the moment, we don’t have the access, and it feels like a real block to capitalize on pharmacist prescribing in the community,” Stretch added.
Danny Bartlett, clinical lead at Kent, Surrey and Sussex Primary Care School and a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s English Pharmacy Board, said: “I honestly think it’s the most important rate-limiting factor.
“We need all pharmacists as clinicians to have all of the information of patients to make the best and most informed decisions about their care.
“Particularly prescribing — how are we meant to train effective prescribers if they only have 20% of the information available?” Bartlett added.
