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The British Medical Association’s (BMA) conference of English local medical committees (LMCs) is due to vote on a motion that proposes scrapping community pharmacy blood pressure checks “with immediate effect”.
The motion is set to be debated at the 2024 Annual Conference of England LMC Representatives, which is being held in London on 22 November 2024.
If passed, the motion will “guide” the BMA’s GPs’ committee policy, the body that negotiates the GP contract with government.
Part of the motion, to be proposed by Devon LMC under the ‘community pharmacy’ section of the agenda, states: “The conference recognises the necessity of community pharmacy and demands that: the wastefulness of paying a seventh of a practice’s GMS [general medical services] fee per patient for a blood pressure check that then generates more work for the practice be terminated with immediate effect and the money put into pharmacy dispensing fees.”
NHS England launched the NHS community pharmacy blood pressure check service in October 2021, enabling community pharmacists to offer checks to people aged over 40 years without a diagnosis of hypertension, and those aged under 40 years who request a check owing to a family history of hypertension.
Under the service, GP practices can refer patients to community pharmacies for either clinic readings or ambulatory measurements. Test results are then shared with the patient’s GP.
Other parts of the motion demand that “Pharmacy First schemes follow guidelines on prescribing and ensure appropriate antibiotic stewardship”, adding that “[community pharmacy’s] survival not be made contingent upon doing work traditionally and contractually the remit of general practice”.
The motion also calls for “the increasing tendency of NHS England to pit general practice and community pharmacy against each other in zero-sum games for scant funding be ended”.
Other motions included in the LMC conference agenda discuss Pharmacy First further, with one stating that Pharmacy First is “failing to both ‘save up to 10 million general practice team appointments a year’ and help patients ‘access quicker and more convenient care’ as initially promised by NHS England”.
As a result, it is asking for the BMA GPs committee in England to work with Community Pharmacy England to investigate outcomes of the scheme, such as prescribing rates, clinical outcomes and dispensing waits.
However, these motions are unlikely to be debated at the conference.
In October 2024, analysis by The Pharmaceutical Journal revealed that Pharmacy First consultation numbers began to decrease in June 2024, despite an upwards trend in the number of consultations after its launch in January 2024.
Although this could be attributed to seasonality, pharmacy organisations have attributed low consultation numbers in general to a lack of referrals from GPs, as well as insufficient advertising of the service.
