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The ‘Independent prescribing in community pharmacy pathfinder programme’ has recorded more than 17,000 consultations as of 6 May 2025, according to NHS England data shared at the Clinical Pharmacy Congress (CPC) 2025.
Speaking at the CPC, held in London on 9 and 10 May 2025, Ghulam Haydar, senior policy lead — community pharmacy transformation and commissioning at NHS England, also told delegates that more than 8,000 new medicines have been commenced, more than 600 medicines have been stopped and around 2,000 medicines have been changed through the programme.
In September 2022, David Webb, the chief pharmaceutical officer for England, told The Pharmaceutical Journal that ‘pathfinder’ sites would begin trialling NHS-commissioned independent prescribing pharmacy services in each integrated care board.
Under the programme, 210 community pharmacies across all 42 integrated care boards (ICBs) in England will trial independent prescribing for a range of conditions, including minor illnesses and long-term conditions, as part of a locally-commissioned — but nationally funded — clinical service.
Haydar added that just under half of consultations (41%) delivered by the pathfinder programme had led to a new medicine being prescribed.
In his presentation, Haydar highlighted that the usual route for medicines being prescribed, changed or stopped would have been referral to the patient’s GP.
He reminded delegates that independent prescribing itself is not a service, but a bolt-on to services that already exist. He reiterated that the aim of the pathfinder programme is to develop a framework for the future commissioning of NHS community pharmacy clinical services that include independent prescribing.
“Up and down the country, we have got a number of services that have been commissioned, with prescribing bolted on,” Haydar added.
The most common clinical model is minor ailments, with 107 sites providing this service, followed by hypertension and respiratory, with 73 and 37 sites, respectively.
The next phase of the programme is to develop a commissioning framework to support local and national commissioning of community pharmacist prescribing, including a toolkit and comprehensive guidance on what needs to be considered from a clinical governance, digital and technical perspective.
“We want to learn from what’s worked best in the pathfinder programme,” Haydar said, adding that the University of Manchester will be looking at best practice as part of its NHS-commissioned independent evaluation of the programme and that NHS England will use the findings to inform its guidance.
The national commissioning framework for the pathfinder programme was originally scheduled for March 2024.
Also speaking at the session, Rita Shah, community pharmacy independent prescribing pathfinder programme lead within North East London (NEL) ICB, stressed that engaging with GP practices is critical to the success of the programme.
“We didn’t foresee the time it would take to engage practices,” said Shah. “Some practices who initially engaged pulled out; this was one of the longest parts of the process.”
Chairing the CPC session, Anne Joshua, deputy director of pharmacy commissioning and transformation, primary care community services at NHS England, said she would like to see relationships between GP pharmacists and community pharmacists “grow”.
In response to a question from the audience about what standards will be used to evaluate the pathfinders against, Joshua said that the evaluation being undertaken in partnership with the University of Manchester is “focusing very much on a qualitative evaluation and looking at the experiences and learning” from the pathfinder sites.
She added that NHS England is also engaging with ICBs, which are undertaking their own evaluations.
In December 2024, Well Pharmacy in Keighley, West Yorkshire, became the first community pharmacy pathfinder site to go live, using an electronic prescription service (EPS) specifically designed for the pilot.
During the CPC 2024, held on 11 May 2024, Wasim Baqir, then senior pharmacist for the Pharmacy Integration Fund at NHS England, announced that 14 pathfinder sites had gone live prior to the EPS being ready.
Pharmacy sites taking part in the scheme were originally planned to launch in January 2023, but faced complications owing to issues with funding and implementation.
- This article was amended on 16 May 2025 to change ‘quantitative evaluation’ to ‘qualitative evaluation’.
