Journal of Pharmacy Management - Jan 2022

Journal of Pharmacy Management • Volume 38 • Issue 1 • January 2022 Independent prescribing in community pharmacy across Wales Dr Adam Mackridge, Strategic Lead for Community Pharmacy at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, chairs a group that looks at independent prescribing in community pharmacy across Wales. Recently the Editor interviewed him about his role and his hopes for prescribing in the community in Wales. Correspondence to: [email protected] FACE2FACE GrahamBrack: Adam, thanks for giving up your time. Can you set the scene for us? Adam Mackridge: We use independent prescribers differently to England. From what I understand, we’re probably more similar to Scotland. There was a government policy document “A Healthier Wales”, which said what the Welsh Government wants to do with health care in Wales. From that came “Pharmacy delivering a Healthier Wales”, which was the Welsh Pharmaceutical Committee response. In that there is a commitment that by 2030 every community pharmacy would have an actively prescribing pharmacist working in it, and by 2022 one-third of pharmacies would have that. The Welsh Government invested money in training places, so they've been funding 50 places across Wales per year. It's gone up to 60 places this financial year for community pharmacists to train as independent prescribers, which pays for the fees, but there is also £3000 available to contractors for their staff to be backfilled to do their necessary training. We as a Health Board have been given a pot of seed funding which is based on the scale of the Health Board. We get £40,000 a year to pay for the little things you need to pay for, so we use that largely to fund the designated professional practitioners (DPPs), but also to pay for some software and equipment to help with the setup of the service. There is a ring-fenced pot of money which must be spent by the Health Board on prescribing services, and if we don't spend it on prescribing services, it's taken off us so effectively it means those prescribing services up to the limit of that pot have no cost to us as a Health Board. All of those things together have created quite a bit of impetus behind the service. GB: And how has it been used in the various localities? AM: In Betsi Cadwaladr we have gone down the route of an acute condition service. Most other health boards have got something similar in place or planned. Dylan Jones in Llanidloes was the first pharmacist in Wales to offer that sort of service. He's probably been doing it for about five or six years now. We have been running it for a couple of years in Betsi Cadwaladr. In other parts of Wales, I know there's a de-prescribing service and there's a contraception service in Cardiff. We currently have one person who does contraception as well in Betsi Cadwaladr, although we're rolling out more. We've gone to about ten pharmacies at the moment in Betsi but our plan is that by the end of January we should have about 20-25 based on those who are just qualifying now or in the last month or two. We've also got another 14 or 15 in training who are due to qualify in late spring. By the end of summer next year, we're hoping to have 40, possibly 45, pharmacies providing a service in 29