General Practice Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (GP CPCS)
GP CPCS is a digital GP referral method that offers patients the option of having a face-to-face appointment or remote consultation with a pharmacist (usually the same day) following an initial triage by a practice care navigator for a range of minor illnesses. Should the patient need to be escalated or referred to an alternative service, the pharmacist can arrange this and will also share a summary with the GP practice of the consultation for the patient’s medical record.
The aim of the service is to help alleviate pressure on GP appointments and emergency departments, in addition to harnessing the skills and medicines knowledge of pharmacists. It is believed that 6-10% of practice appointment capacity could be effectively directed into community pharmacy.
From October 2021 GP CPCS will form part of the Impact Investment Fund and PCNs will need to confirm that they work collaboratively with local community pharmacy colleagues to develop and commence delivery of a plan to increase referrals to the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, with referral levels increasing by no later than 31 March 2022 (56 points).
Additionally from April 2022 PCNs will need to evidence that they use GP CPCS to improve patients access to primary care services through referrals to the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (at a requirement of 0.65 per 1000 per week)(27points). The snomed codes for recording GP CPCS referrals can be found below:
- 1362511000000107 |Referral to Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (procedure)
- 1362521000000101 |Referral to Community Pharmacist Consultation Service refused (situation)
The Lincolnshire Medical Council (LMC) and the Local Pharmaceutical Committee (LPC) have developed a local toolkit to support practice implementation. The documents are linked below.
- GP Introduction and Important Steps for Rolling out GP CPCS FINAL
- GP FAQs for CPCS Roll out in Lincolnshire
- GP Tools for Lincolnshire Roll Out – Conditions Sheet
- GP CPCS Reception Flowchart
- GP CPCS Flyer V3 Jan 2021
- GP Tools for Lincs Roll out – Patient Pharmacist Consultation
- GP Tools for Lincs Roll out – Referral Journey
- Lincolnshire Flow Chart GP CPCS Practice Referral to CPCS FINAL
The LPC also ran two webinars for GP Practices and PCNs to help them to understand the key elements & overview of the service and the opportunity to ask questions. Recordings of these webinars are available below, and although the content is the same, the Q&As are different at the end.
- GP Practice and PCN Webinar 9th June
- GP Practice and PCN Webinar 17th June - missing first part due to technical issues
We are really keen to support Practices (where possible) to implement GP CPCS. Each ICS area has a designated GP-CPCS Lead, for your region this is Emily.Topham@nhs.net who will be happy to help with any queries you may have around implementation. Please also contact Emily for a list of participating pharmacies, script for frontline triage staff and / or EMIS compatible referral form.