Community Pharmacy Consultation Service (CPCS)
Updated 29/11/2022
The service connects patients who have a minor illness or need an urgent supply of a medicine with a community pharmacy. The CPCS takes referrals to community pharmacy from NHS 111 (and NHS 111 online for requests for urgent supply), and more recently, GP practices have been able to refer patients with minor acuity conditions into the service.
The CPCS aims to relieve pressure on the wider NHS by connecting patients with community pharmacy, which should be their first port of call and can deliver a swift, convenient and effective service to meet their needs. The CPCS provides the opportunity for community pharmacy to play a bigger role than ever within the urgent care system.
To register to provide this service, the contractor must complete the CPCS registration declaration within the MYS portal.
Once registered for the service contractors must be able to receive and complete any referrals made to them, as referrals could commence at any time following registration.
A pharmacy’s registration on the MYS portal will be notified to the local Directory of Service lead and a profile for the CPCS service will be set up for the pharmacy. Only at that point will patients be referred to the contractor. Pharmacies do not need to register seperately to receive referrals from GPs; once registered for CPCS contractors must be able to receive and manage referrals.
Delivering the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (CPCS) when a relief or locum pharmacist is working in the pharmacy
PRINCIPLES:
- Pharmacies signed up to deliver CPCS must ensure that the service is available throughout the pharmacy’s full opening hours. This inevitably means that for most pharmacies, locum or relief pharmacists will form part of the delivery model
- Pharmacies should identify members or roles within the team that will have responsibility/accountability for ensuring that the CPCS process is undertaken, and for providing the locum/relief pharmacist with the essential patient information to allow them to conduct the necessary consultation, and capture the necessary information within PharmOutcomes (or alternative CPCS system)
- All locum/relief pharmacists should ensure that they can access the relevant pharmacy system (e.g. PharmOutcomes), enter their pharmacist registration, and process the consultation. This may require re-enrolment if prompted by the system (a simple and brief process)
- All pharmacies should ensure that the specified team members or roles have access to the PharmOutcomes (or alternative system) as well as to the NHS.net shared mailbox for the pharmacy, to ensure that can access and process referrals, regardless of whether these come from GP surgeries, NHS111 or urgent care centres, ready for the pharmacist to conduct and complete the consultation requirements
You can download a pdf of the above process that can be easily printed here:
