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Community pharmacies have delivered almost 7 million blood pressure checks since the launch of the hypertension case-finding service in October 2021, NHS England has said.
Speaking at the Pharmacy Show, held in Birmingham on 12 and 13 October 2025, Tasneem Mueen-Iqbal, deputy director of community pharmacy clinical strategy, policy and reform at NHS England, presented data showing that pharmacies had delivered “more than 6.9 million clinic and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring checks (ABPM)” from the launch of the service to June 2025.
The nationally-commissioned advanced service is aimed to identify people aged 40 years or older with high blood pressure who have previously not had a confirmed diagnosis of hypertension.
Rob Hebdon, senior policy lead in pharmacy clinical strategy at NHS England, added that the service was particularly having a “positive impact” on health inequalities.
Data shared by Hebdon showed that more than 1 million patients — including returning patients — had received a blood pressure check via the service in the top 10% most deprived areas in England, along with a further 1 million patients in the next 20% most deprived areas.
“One of the great strengths of community pharmacy is its access and the fact that it is positioned really well to have a positive impact on health inequalities,” he said.
“We know that we’ve got returning patients coming into the hypertension case-finding service. But again, the majority of the patients are within those top three deciles. So I think we can infer from that this is seriously having a positive impact on health inequalities.
“44% of all checks are completed by pharmacies located within the 30% most deprived areas, which is, again, something that’s worth us shouting about,” Hebdon added.
As part of the 2025/2026 pharmacy contract, pharmacies must deliver the hypertension case-finding service — as well as the pharmacy contraception service — as part of requirements to receive monthly Pharmacy First fixed payments.
In October 2025, Community Pharmacy England announced that a requirement for pharmacies to provide at least one ABPM consultation per month as part of this ‘bundling’ requirement would not go ahead from 1 October 2025 as originally planned.
Kirsty Armstrong, pharmacy integration lead in pharmacy clinical strategy at NHS England, also presented data at the Pharmacy Show, showing that more than 654,000 consultations had taken place under the pharmacy contraception service since its launch in April 2023, comprising of more than 93,000 initiations and 561,000 ongoing supplies.
The expansion of the national pharmacy emergency contraception service to include the provision of oral emergency contraception, which is scheduled for 29 October 2025, will also help to tackle health inequalities, Armstrong added.
Data on the pharmacy smoking cessation service, also presented at the Pharmacy Show, revealed that more than 90 NHS trusts had made more than 10,000 referrals to community pharmacy as of May 2025, with around a 50% quit rate for those who had engaged with the service.
