NHS Borders Primary Care Pharmacy Teams

NHS Borders now has several Pharmacy Teams providing a clinical service within the primary care setting.

The teams consist of:

Team

Role

Contact

Pharmacotherapy:  practice-based pharmacists

Delivery of the GMS contract.

Sessional work in GP practices to process:

  • Acute prescriptions
  • Limited repeat requests
  • Medicines information queries.

 

Via GP practice

GP practice administration inbox

Pharmacotherapy: Hub-based pharmacy technicians

Delivery of GMS contract. Centrally based Pharmacy Technician-led service to deliver consisting of pharmacy technicians and pharmacy support staff:

  • Medicines Reconciliation of hospital discharge and clinic letters
  • Implementation of serial prescriptions & TSRs
  • Support with medicine shortage queries
  • Notify community pharmacies for patients using MAR charts and MCAs as well as instalment dispensing.

 

Via shared Pharmacotherapy East or Pharmacotherapy West team shared mailbox

Realistic Medicine Pharmacy Service

Team consists of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.

Undertake medicines management and polypharmacy reviews by referral and liaise with social care providers regarding packages of care as required.

 

Referral criteria:

Patients who:

  • are over 75 years of age
  • are prescribed 10 or more regular medicines
  • have a moderate to high risk of admission or re-admission to hospital

and

  • require medicines management assessment and/or polypharmacy review carried out in primary care/community setting.

 

Refer to Realistic Medicine Pharmacy Referral (RMPR) Team via email

Prescribing Support Team

 

Team consists of Pharmacists, Pharmacy Technician & Pharmacy Support Workers.

 

Working on

  • Prescribing Efficiency projects;
  • Prescribing Improvement projects;
  • Supporting prescribing with management of East Region Formulary on GPIT systems;
  • Managing Scriptswitch software.

 

Via Prescribing Support Team mailbox.

Community Pharmacy Team

Team consists of two Pharmacists and one Admin Support.

 

The team will respond to general enquiries, including for example:

  • Claims for local services;
  • IEP (Needle Exchange) orders;
  • Public holiday notifications;
  • Requests for NHS Mail, ECS and PCR access;
  • Request for waste medicines pickup;
  • Specials Authorisations;
  • Temporary/unplanned pharmacy closure.

Via Community Pharmacy Team mailbox.

 

As you can see from this list of tasks there will be many occasions when you, as a community pharmacy team, will need to liaise with the primary care pharmacy team.

Having a good working relationship with your primary care pharmacy team members will help smooth the patient journey between the various interfaces of care.

If a member of the pharmacy team is not available, urgent queries need to be sent to the duty GP.  Please follow the procedure outlined.

 

Useful resources

Delivering the new GMS contract in Scotland: memorandum of understanding. Available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/delivering-the-new-gms-contract-in-scotland-memorandum-of-understanding/ [accessed 13 December 2022]

2021 update to 2018 Scottish GMS contract. Available at: https://www.bma.org.uk/pay-and-contracts/contracts/gp-contract/2021-update-to-2018-scottish-gms-contract [accessed 13 December 2022]