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<p>In terms of promoting self-care, community pharmacy contractors are already obliged
by the community pharmacy contractual framework to provide advice and support to enable
people to derive maximum benefit from caring for themselves or their families. NHS
England and Improvement have been running the Help Us to Help You campaigns which
educate the public on the ability of community pharmacies to help the public and patients
with their needs relating to self-care and minor illness.</p><p>In 2016, Public Health
England (PHE) introduced profession-led self-assessment for attainment of healthy
living pharmacy (HLP) level 1 status. This was followed by the introduction of a quality
payment for HLP level 1 status attainment. As a result, there has been an increase
in the numbers achieving HLP status. There are now more than 9,500 community pharmacies
already accredited as HLPs, each with qualified health champions promoting health
and wellbeing messages, helping to prevent people from becoming ill and maintaining
the health of those that are already ill in their communities.</p><p>PHE is developing
an HLP framework for commissioners which can be used when commissioning public health
services to ensure consistency of delivery across the country, due to be published
in spring 2020. These services help to further increase the role of community pharmacy
in prevention and improving health.</p><p>In terms of community pharmacies as a first
point of contact, the HLP initiative is also relevant. In addition, since December
2017, NHS England and NHS Improvement has been piloting the Digital Minor Illness
Referral Service. This is a service that allows referrals from NHS 111 to community
pharmacies for advice and support for minor illnesses and health concerns. The outcome
for the patient, if they attend the pharmacy for a consultation with the pharmacist,
may be either to receive advice alone or advice with access to medicines through a
private sale of an over the counter medicine or potentially a medicine supply through
a locally commissioned minor ailment scheme. In November 2018, the pilot was expanded
to include London, Devon and the East Midlands., in addition to the North East.</p><p>Since
2016, the NHS Medicines Supply Advanced Service has been piloted. This is service
manages a referral from NHS 111 to a community pharmacy where a patient has contacted
NHS 111 because they need urgent access to a medicine or appliance that they have
been previously prescribed on a National Health Service prescription.</p><p>Furthermore,
the Department, with NHS England and NHS Improvement, has now begun negotiations with
the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee to determine the new Community Pharmacy
Contractual Framework for 2019/20 and beyond. These are confidential negotiations
and as such we are unable to provide further detail at this time.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p>
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