NHS England is set to smash its target to deploy an extra 1,500 practice-based pharmacists through the GP Forward View (GPFV) programme, a GP body has predicted.
Among the key commitments of the GPFV, the Government invested £31m in introducing 470 pharmacists across more than 700 practices, with an additional £112m pot of funding to see a further 1,500 pharmacists in practices over the next three years.
In its second GPFV annual assessment, the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) said that the scheme is ‘on track to exceed its target of 1,500 by 2020/21’.
Plans to recruit up to 2,000 pharmacists
The document said: ‘Indicative plans that are in place suggest there will be an additional 2,000 clinical pharmacists working in general practice by 2020/21.
‘A total of 1,200 full-time equivalent (FTE) clinical pharmacists for Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the programme are due to be in post by summer 2018.’
According to the RCGP, there were 615 FTE pharmacists working in general practice in September 2017, which is an increase of 202 FTE pharmacists compared to the previous year. The data also showed that an extra 708 applications for FTE pharmacists working across more than 3,200 practices had been approved, as of March of this year.
The RCGP has not yet confirmed how many more practice pharmacists it would like to see but told The Pharmacist that the current criteria for practices to show a pharmacist will be working at a scale of one to every 30,000 population should be relaxed to one pharmacist to every 10,000.
Call for recurrent funding
Last week, the RCGP called on the Government to continue to pay for GP pharmacists after the funding ends, highlighting the ‘significant impact’ they had on GP workload and practice efficiencies, especially with medicines management and polypharmacy patients.
The document read: ‘Many practices are concerned that they will not be able to afford to continue to employ their pharmacists once this funding ends, unless additional recurrent funding is provided practices to support this.
‘Funding of clinical pharmacists in general practice should be made recurrent, and the programme expanded to allow for more pharmacists, and therefore a better pharmacist: patient ratio.’
The story was first published on MIP’s sister publication, The Pharmacist
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