COVID-19: 20th April round-up for primary care
Information on resources being made available to pharmacy colleagues to support public messaging and details of upcoming webinars
Marketing and communications support for pharmacies
We wanted to give you an update on our progress with our public facing work and resources to support pharmacies during the pandemic.
- New resources for pharmacies were added to the PHE Campaign Resource Centre on 10 April and are available for download here, these include versions optimised for printing locally on site.
- We are mailing out a package of resources to all community pharmacies via the Royal Mail which will be delivered by the end of this week. All pharmacies will receive the following posters: ‘Do not enter if you have symptoms of coronavirus’, ‘Keep a safe distance’ - reminding people to keep 2 metres apart; and ‘We may be closed to the public during certain times’ - with white space for them to add their opening hours.
- Our public facing messaging for relevant pages on the NHS website www.nhs.uk is being updated.
- Digital resources for pharmacies are being developed and include a digital screen, social media assets (optimised for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) in the national look and feel used for coronavirus public facing marketing messages. These will be available this week.
- We will also be launching a national public facing PR shortly.
Regular primary care webinars
- 22 April, 7-8pm: Community pharmacy webinar with Keith Ridge and Ed Waller
COVID-19: 21st April round-up for primary care
The Pharmacy Clinical Assessment Service (CAS) continues to build on the initial phase launched last Friday. The CAS is run by South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) as part of the COVID-19 CAS response to support the NHS 111 and IUC response to the pandemic. Pharmacists from a range of backgrounds have volunteered to work remotely including staff from community pharmacy providers and returners to practice.
Movement of pharmacy employees between their residence and place of work
The RPS and GPhC has produced a letter to support the legitimate movement of pharmacy employees between their home and place of work.
Metropolitan police guidance: community pharmacy security
The Metropolitan police has issued guidance specifically for community pharmacy premises offering advice on security of premises, and safety and well-being of staff and customers during the pandemic.
COVID-19: 22nd April round-up for primary care
Staff testing for COVID-19
Following Pauline Philip DBE, National Director for Emergency and Elective Care and Sarah-Jane Marsh, National CEO lead for NHS Staff Testing, letter of 12 April, contractors have been sent details on how their staff can access testing. This has been sent in an email sent by the NHS Business Services Authority to the NHSmail shared mailbox of each community pharmacy in England. The email contained a link to an invitation template for employees needing testing. Pharmacy contractors or their employees should not publish or share this invitation or the link to the CQC online portal, beyond employees who require testing.
Returning to pharmacy or volunteering
Extra help for pharmacy would be invaluable right now, with pharmacy teams across the country under huge pressure because of COVID-19. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society are providing advice on roles or activities for volunteers or those who may wish to return temporarily to the register, based on their skills and experience
EPS one-off nomination in TPP SystmOne
One-off nomination functionality for EPS has been rolled out to all TPP SystmOne users. The new feature allows patients’ electronic prescriptions to be sent to an alternative pharmacy when their regular nomination is not appropriate, for example if it is closed or if specific items are required.
Pharmacies can be searched by postcode and opening hours. One-off nominations do not affect future prescriptions; these will continue to be sent to the patient’s regular nominated pharmacy. The one-off prescription will, however, be affected if the regular nomination is changed before it has been downloaded by the pharmacy.
EMIS is also developing this functionality for their EMIS Web system and will share further information on this in due course.
COVID-19: 23rd April round-up for primary care
Extending access to Shielded Patient Flag and SCR for locum pharmacists
To support community pharmacy teams to work efficiently and flexibly in response to COVID-19, we have been working with NHS Digital to extend access to the Summary Care Record (SCR). This will also provide access to the Shielded Patients Flag in SCR Application (SCRa).
The first phase of this work will grant SCR access to all locum pharmacists with the 5F locum code on their smartcards. A new smartcard role, National Locum Pharmacist + SCR – COVID-19, will start to be added to smartcards from this evening and will automatically expire after one year. This will be done centrally with no action required by individuals.
This role should be used when working flexibly at sites where you do not have a dedicated smartcard role specific to the site.
Guidance on ethical professional decision making in the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society have produced a new ethical decision making framework to support pharmacists and pharmacy teams faced with making difficult decisions linked to the exceptional impact of COVID-19. The framework can be used to support colleagues involved in strategic planning, or to help people with their medicines and is for use by pharmacy professionals in all settings.
A reminder to keep your NHS 111 Directory of Services Profile and your NHS website profile up to date
With more people using online services, it is important to keep your NHS website profile up to date. The step-by-step guide for updating your NHS Website profile is available here. For temporary closures of more than 5 days please amend your opening times within the Dos Profile Updater, for temporary closures of less than 5 days please amend your RAG status to ‘RED’ using the DoS Capacity status tool which can be accessed from the login page on DoS Profile Updater.
COVID-19: 24th April round-up for primary care
8th May Bank Holiday Opening
While COVID-19 infections are anticipated to be plateauing, it may not feel any different for the many areas of our country managing the increased care needs of our population and impact on staff. General practice and community pharmacy opening on the two Easter bank holidays had a positive impact on the wider health and social care system where it was needed most. Thank you for this.
However, we know demand is variable across the country and with more notice local primary care capacity could have been better matched in some areas. We are reviewing the data on activity as it becomes available, but we wanted to confirm now our expectations for opening on the next bank holiday, Friday 8th May.
Our key messages for you are to plan for:
- GP Practices opening but agreeing with their CCG in advance if that level of the service is needed and the staff cover required. Network level cover may be agreed as an alternative in view of anticipated demand.
- Planned bank holiday cover (OOH/IUC/EA) to be adjusted as needed in response to GP practice opening.
- All community pharmacy open 2-5pm but with any exceptions agreed in advance with NHSE&I regional teams.
- Planned community pharmacy and urgent dental care bank holiday cover to proceed unless otherwise agreed with NHSE&I regional team.
Please use your experience of the Easter bank holidays to ensure you have the right level of cover needed for your area.
We will confirm the arrangements in more detail early next week.
Patient facing information for pharmacies
We have produced new public-facing digital posters for pharmacies to use on social media and in-pharmacy screens with the following messages:
- Don’t enter your local pharmacy if you or anyone you live with has coronavirus symptoms
- There’s no need to order extra medicines
- Pharmacies are having to make changes to allow them to stay open during the pandemic.
These can be downloaded here and will also be used on our social media and shared with stakeholders for use on their channels as well.
We have also updated the following nhs.uk pages to reflect feedback from community pharmacy in light of the coronavirus pandemic:
- How to order repeat prescriptions online
- What to expect from your pharmacy team
- How to get medical help from home
We will be launching a public facing PR campaign in early May.
Change to shielded patient wording in SCR
Further to the successful implementation of the Shielded Patient Flag for community pharmacy (accessible via the SCR application and SCR 1-click solutions) access is now being extended to all users of the SCR application to support access for healthcare professionals in other settings, including hospitals and out of hours services.
As a result of this extended access the wording of the alert has been amended to the following: “This person has been advised to consider shielding. This information may support you to manage this patient but should not be used in isolation as an assessment of risk. Patient management decisions should always be made drawing on the widest range of information sources.”
