DUDLEY LOCAL PHARMACEUTICAL COMMITTEE
Chairman: Dan Attry MRPharmS, Pg Dip.
8 Abbotts Mews, Withymoor Village, Brierley Hill, West Midlands, DY5 3DG
Tel: 07973632548 E-mail:
Chief Officer: Pete Szczepanski MPharmS, Clin Dip, IP
22 Lindford Way, Kings Norton, Birmingham, West Midlands, B38 0BD
Tel: 07774719508 E-Mail:
http://psnc.org.uk/dudley-lpc/
Minutes of the LPC Committee Meeting on 12th October 2015
Open Section of the Minutes
Present: Pete Szczepanski (PS), Dan Attry (DA), Stephen Noble (SN), Scot Taylor (ST), Mohammed Mahroof (MM), Vijay Lad (VL), Thomas Thomik (TT), Amjid Iqbal (AI) and Gurvinder Singh Najran (GSN).Abul Kashem (AK), Dinesh Patel (DP)
In attendance: Jag Sangha (JS); Office of Public Health/Medicines Management, Michelle Dyoss (MD); Dudley CPDO.
1. Welcome
DA welcomed the members and opened the meeting at 7.05pm.
2. Apologies
Lynn Rees (LR), Diane Walker (DW), Matthew Cox (MC)
3. Declaration of Interest
There were no declarations of interest for this meeting
4. Pharmacy First Scheme
JS had seen the new service specification and said that he had had a chat with the Commissioners of the Scheme from the Dudley CCG. He said that there were a lot of participating pharmacies in Dudley, but raised concerns that some pharmacies might not be ready to deliver the scheme especially if a GP surgery had signposted a patient to a specific pharmacy. He wanted to get a list of participating pharmacies in Dudley so he could circulate to all GP surgeries. JS said that the service had been commissioned by NHS England who recognise that the list of active participating pharmacies would change overtime but it would be a good idea to get a list of current pharmacies who were participating in scheme as last year there had been a list of pharmacies.
AI commented that last year , the Pharmacy First Scheme was being run as a pilot and only certain GP surgeries had signed up to the service.
JS said that last year, registration for the Pharmacy First Service was restricted to certain participating surgeries. He also had reservations after ringing around some pharmacies to find that they were not ready. He indicated that this time around GP practices would fully support the Pharmacy First Scheme and he wanted all pharmacies on board. JS also commented that there had been some errors in the Formulary.
PS expanded on this saying he had seen the Formulary and Service Specification and had flagged up numerous errors. These have now been corrected..
JS said that promotional materials had already gone out to CCGs but he was trying to get it put on hold until he had a list of participating pharmacies. He commented that the service specification required the regular pharmacist or regular Responsible Pharmacist to have completed the CCPE Minor Ailments pack and other pharmacists were able to deliver the service as long as there was an SOP in place which they had read and signed.
DA said that the Scheme last year had been rushed through and that is why some Contractors were not ready to participate. He also said that he would raise these concerns about pharmacies not being ready at a Cluster LPC meeting to be held on the following evening of Tuesday 13th October 2015. DA commented that it would be a good idea through the Buddy Group system to contact all Contractors and see if they were ready to participate or not in the Pharmacy First Scheme.
JS gave PS the list of pharmacies which he knew were ready to provide the Pharmacy First Service.
AK asked whether the Consultation fee had gone up to £5 yet as on PharmOutcomes it was still showing up as being paid £4.50
ST said that the fee had increased from 1st October 2015 in line with when the new Pharmacy First Scheme had been launched.
AK wanted to know whether Birmingham patients can use Dudley pharmacies to access the scheme.
JS replied that they could as long as the patient’s surgery was participating in the scheme.
DA said that you would not be able to see the surgery on PharmOutcomes if it was not participating.
JS also confirmed that if the patient was registered with a Dudley Practice then the patient could access the scheme anywhere in the Cluster area.
VL asked what had been done training wise and awareness wise from the GP side and reception side to promote the service.
JS said that they had been sent posters but would only be able to signpost patients if they knew which pharmacies were actively providing the service.
DA said that it was incumbent that we as pharmacists and the Committee promote the service as patients need to learn to come to the pharmacy first instead of going to the GP surgery first. DA agreed with JS that a list of participating pharmacists must be drawn up.
VL said that Dudley LPC needs to send a strong message to all Contractors to take the Pharmacy First Scheme on board.
DP asked who to send the list of participating pharmacies to from the Buddy Group system.
PS asked that they be forwarded to him so he could collate the list and send it on to JS.
DA agreed that we must collate a list and circulate it via JS to GP surgeries.
JS commented that the Dudley CCG are fully behind and supportive of the Pharmacy First Service.
Actions: All Committee members to contact their Buddy Groups and find out if there are ready to provide the Pharmacy First Scheme and obtain a valid work based email address and report back to PS by the end of the week.
PS then to collate results and send on to JS for circulation around Dudley GP practices.
5. Promotion and Advertising of the Flu Vaccination Service
DA started by thanking PS and SN for all of their hard work. He said that Birmingham, Solihull, Sandwell and Wolverhampton LPCs went with radio promotion using Smooth FM and Unity radio. DA had looked at the Black Country radio website but felt it wouldn’t provide adequate coverage for promotion of the NHS Flu Vaccination Service.
PS said that the Flu Vaccination advertisement would go in Dudley, Stourbridge and Halesowen News and on their website from Thursday for a week with a link to the Dudley LPC website where SN had collated participating Contractors providing the free Flu Vaccination Service. This included the Contractors opening times and a map to make it easy for the patient to find the Contractor. PS had also circulated the first set of figures which indicated that the region had provided 15,000 vaccinations in the first two weeks of the campaign. The Dudley set of figures were looking really good.
DA advised the Committee that there was plenty of flu promotional material available on the PSNC website
AI also commented that 15,000 vaccinations across the region was encouraging.
DA asked Committee members to contact their Buddy Groups and see if they were actively participating in the NHS Flu Vaccination Scheme so they could be added to the Dudley LPC website.
JS said that there had been a couple of incidents already concerning the incorrect information being sent to the surgeries such as wrong name and wrong date of birth were two issues. He advised that pharmacists must be aware of governance issues.
ST reported that one of his pharmacies had been contacted by a GP practice asking for the expiry date, batch number and make of the flu vaccine which they had provided to their patients.
DA said that this shouldn’t be happening as surgeries don’t need that level of detail as if there was a product recall, it would be the pharmacist’s responsibility to contact the patient not the surgery. He advised that if any further incidents like these occurred to refer them on to the LPC who would deal with these issues.
JS confirmed that there was no need to send the batch number and expiry date to the GP practice.
PS said that he had circulated guidance to all Contractors that GP’s must be notified that one of their patients had been vaccinated within 24 hours of the vaccination taking place.
6. PHP-P Report
MD said that there had been a training event on Child Exploitation and Trafficking on 15th September 2015 last month but only two Community pharmacists turned up. She said that people offering the EHC service need to be aware of Child Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation issues.
MD commented that Health training and Champions training would be revisited by the end of the year.
MD circulated an Outreach work brief to all Committee members present. She said that there was £30,000 worth of funding still available for alcohol work. She wants the outreach team to organise and deliver 10 events between now and up to the end of January 2016. Venues could be Community centres and places where young people go. If anyone is interested in participating then just need to put their idea or plan down on one piece of A4 sided paper along with the costs incurred such as staff time or back fill for a pharmacy. At the end of the event, a report needs to be submitted detailing how many people were engaged with and what interventions were used. Proposals for the funding need to be submitted by 20th October 2015.
MD said that from 23rd- 30th November 2015, would be HIV Testing Week. Currently one in five people don’t know that they have the virus. She will be using the same 12 pharmacies to carry out the testing, the same as last year. A training event has been organised on 3rd November 2015. There are two slots available from 4pm -6pm or 6pm-8.30pm at Brierley Hill Health and Social Care Centre.
MD advised the Committee that this time the patient would have a choice of two tests offered to them, either a blood test or a swab test. The blood test is quicker and only takes a few minutes whereas the swab test takes up to 15 minutes.
MD said that up to now there had only been one positive test reported and that was done at Summit House.
MD circulated another leaflet to the Committee members about Excellence through Social Enterprise due to be held on Friday 27th November 2015 at the Priory Community Pharmacy.
MD commented that there had been a Think Pharmacy Event at Stourbridge College on 18th September 2015 and another one at Old Swinford School on 2nd October 2015. She also said that there was a Healthy Living Pharmacy Unity event on 19th September 2015 which was well attended and there were various interventions such as Chlamydia testing and weight management interventions.
Other events MD mentioned were Get Connected which took place on 22nd September 2015 at the Beacon Centre. Last week there was an Annual Prevention Summit for people working in the Council which was to do with talking about services across the Borough.
MD said that she currently sits on the following groups: Young Person’s Hub; Healthy workplace matrix and the Workforce Development Group which is aimed at developing more Health Champions across the Council.
Finally MD spoke about Get Cooking events which are planned to take place in Kingswinford which have Morrison’s and Murrays involved who will be hosting cooking courses.
7. Medicines Management/Office of Public Health Report
JS said that all materials such as postcards and posters for the Wipe Out Waste campaign had been sent out a few weeks ago. The Campaign is running across Walsall, Dudley, and Birmingham South Central. JS has asked that Contractors display the posters in a prominent area and postcards to be put into dispensing bags on dispensing medication.
The Evaluation of Slips and Trips Campaign has now been completed and JS said that the conclusion had come out favourably for pharmacies that had delivered the service. He hoped that it would be recommissioned either in this financial year or the next one.
JS has been updating the PGDs for the commissioned services of EHC(Levonelle 2), Azithromycin and Champix. If pharmacies are supplying these services, then they need to read and resign the PGDs. To be legal, the pharmacies must be operating under the current up to date PGDs.
JS mentioned that the CCG has a Clinical Governance Manager who will be reviewing guidelines and ratifying them.
JS advised that Dudley CCG and Dudley hospitals have been reviewing blood glucose testing machines and have decided to switch to Tee2 machines so the first line blood glucose testing strips will now be Tee2 replacing Glucomen Gm testing strips.
DA asked what the time scale would be for the implementation of the new blood glucose testing machines and strips.
JS said that the expectation would be that when the Practices do their 6 monthly diabetic reviews , then these new machines would be used from then on with training given during the review to the patient. He said that the time period would be 6-12 months. JS also commented that guidelines are reviewed every 2 years.
JS said that Glucomen LX meters would stay the same as these detect ketones.
VL said that the changes can be confusing for patients as every time there is a change the patients come into the pharmacy asking how to use the new machine.
JS said that it was the responsibility of the practice to implement the change when doing the diabetic review and they would demonstrate to the patient how the machine works. JS reaffirmed that this won’t be happening by a letter change, it would be done through the diabetic review clinics.
AI commented that there had been concerns last time that GlucoRx meters had quality control issues with the blood glucose readings being higher than expected compared with standard blood glucose meters.