The government intends to expand Pharmacy First to create the community pharmacy prescribing service promised in its pre-election manifesto, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has suggested.

But CPE chief executive Janet Morrison stressed that funding for the sector needed to be stabilised before the expansion could be put in place.

Ms Morrison told delegates at the Pharmacy Show in Birmingham today: 'It is clear that the intention is, provided that we have got the right bedrock in this sector, to build on Pharmacy First, or to think about how we can increase the conditions in Pharmacy First [and] use the skills of pharmacy teams to do more medicine use reviews for prescribing and deprescribing, and to provide a role for independent prescribers in the future.'

'That's what government would like to see from us, and can see the potential from us,' Ms Morrison added.

Though CPE has told government that they 'cannot have any expansion unless there is stabilisation' of the sector, she added.

And she reported that primary care minster Stephen Kinnock had told her: 'Reform cannot be delivered without investment.'

However, Ms Morrison noted that no funding for the prescribing proposals had been outlined in the Labour party's pre-election manifesto.

The Company Chemists' Association has previously suggested that the government could commission a ‘Pharmacy First Plus’ style prescribing service in the first instance, rather than some of the more novel approaches currently being explored under the pathfinder project.

A Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson told The Pharmacist in response: 'This government inherited a broken NHS where pharmacies have been neglected for years.

'Pharmacies are key to making healthcare fit for the future as we shift the focus of the NHS out of hospitals and into the community.

'We will make better use of pharmacists’ skills, including accelerating the rollout of independent prescribing to improve access to care.'

Reviewing Pharmacy First

Ms Morrison said that NHS England (NHSE) was currently reviewing the Pharmacy First pathways.

And she said CPE would want to explore if they could be made 'more logical'.

For instance, she said it was 'nonsense' that pharmacies could only be paid for giving minor ailments advice outside of the seven clinical pathways if the patient had a GP referral.

Although CPE would like to see minor ailments be made an open access service, Ms Morrison suggested the government did not want to pay for 'all that activity they already get for free'.

And she said she thought CPE would accept an expansion of Pharmacy First conditions, subject to adequate funding for the sector, even if the proposals to make minor ailments open to walk-ins and over-the-counter medicines available for free to low-income patients were not agreed to.

When The Pharmacist asked NHSE Clinical Strategy for Community Pharmacy lead Pallavi Dawda if NHSE was considering opening this part of the service up to walk-in patients, she said it recognised some of the issues raised by contractors around gateway points and time spent on unpaid consultations.

'We are doing a service review as we speak, and working with our partners, Community Pharmacy England and Department of Health, on that,' she said.

'So at this stage, we're listening, we're hearing. We're engaging as much as we can with contractors and also general practice teams to hear what's happening on the ground, working to increase those referrals, and highlight the benefits of sending those referrals from a patient continuity perspective. There's a lot of work in that space,' Ms Dawda said at the Pharmacy Show yesterday.

CPCF negotiations currently 'paused'

Ms Morrison also confirmed that negotiations on the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) were 'paused at the moment'.

She suggested the delay was because the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) was discussing with the Treasury what it could offer the sector.

And she said when the funding for this financial year was agreed, CPE would work to 'get the money out the door quickly' to contractors who have been waiting for a deal since April.