Bringing care closer to home: four lessons from pharmacy

Early challenges with Pharmacy First and the importance of strong partnerships with general practice colleagues were discussed at NHS Confed Expo

5 min read

The cartoon hand of a pharmacist holds paid purchases on the background of the pharmacy interior

Getty/Elena Kopusova

Lucy Miller

09 July 2026

Lessons learnt during the rollout of community care via pharmacies, including under the Pharmacy First scheme, were discussed during NHS Confed Expo 2026 (10–11 June, Manchester Central Convention Centre).

Opening the Care closer to home: how pharmacies are bringing health services to the community panel session, Anne Joshua, deputy director of pharmacy transformation and commissioning at NHS England, emphasised that takeaways for attendees would be practical rather than theoretic, and based on how pharmacists are rolling out community care “on the ground.”

There are 10,500 pharmacists in England who are providing clinical services above and beyond their primary medicine dispensing responsibilities, Joshua said.

This work includes vaccinations, smoking cessation, and a medical discharge service, Joshua noted.

From autumn 2026, all new pharmacists who qualify and enter the profession will be working as prescribers, she told attendees.

She noted that this means a predicted 2000 new IP-qualified pharmacists will join the profession in September this year.

1 Early challenges in Pharmacy First

Dr Nabeel Arshad, GP partner at The Brooke Surgery in North London, revealed early challenges when Pharmacy First was rolled out in his area.

Local GPs had been excited about the service and a large number of pharmacies had signed up, but communication had not cut through to patients so GPs found themselves triaging into pharmacy, Arshad explained.

If the patient did not then receive the care required from the pharmacy the GP surgery would receive negative feedback and the patient would not return to the Pharmacy First service, he added.

“There would be immediate pushback directly onto the practice, so a service that was meant to support general practice from our perspective almost worked against us,” Arshad shared.

In order to overcome this, Arshad’s practice worked directly with relevant local pharmacies to agree clear expectations and responsibilities, he said.

“We had really good pharmacy partners within the area, and we wanted to make it work,” Arshad explained.

He added: “It built a really strong relationship between ourselves, as a GP surgery in an area, and the individual pharmacies in that area.”

There were 2355 referrals made between the GP surgery and Pharmacy First from October 2025 to March 2026, Arshad told attendees.

He noted that the Pharmacy First contraceptive service in particular was a “game changer” for the practice’s nurses, in terms of freeing up clinic time.

There were 412 clinical hours regained in this period, which could equate to 2084 additional GP appointments, Arshad added.

He also noted that 109 clinical hours were released via the NHS Community Pharmacy Independent Prescribing (IP) Pathfinder Programme in the same period.

IP Pathfinder was a national pilot to test how IP pharmacy services could be implemented across England, freeing up GP and hospital appointments. The pilot ran from October 2025 to December 2025, delivering approximately 33,000 patient consultations across 164 pharmacy sites.

2 The potential of primary care in the community

Dr Sotiris Antoniou, a consultant pharmacist and divisional director of clinical services at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in North East London, emphasised that pharmacies are already embedded within communities.

This means that they are well-placed to provide care for those who might be less likely to engage with traditional primary care services, he said.

“Most people access a pharmacy more frequently than they do a GP,” Antoniou noted.

He used the case study of a Bangladeshi gentleman, living in an area of high deprivation, who was able to access care in a pharmacy setting rather than visiting the GP, to emphasise this point.

3 Strong GP relationships are vital

Pam Soo, community pharmacy clinical lead for Cheshire and Merseyside at Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board (ICB), shared details of a pilot to bring pathways for minor illness, respiratory review, hypertension and lipid management into pharmacies in three ICB areas in the north of England.

Soo’s role involves maximising the role of community pharmacy within the profession for the benefit of providers and patients, she explained.

She emphasised that the pilot was to test processes, governance and structure, rather than whether pharmacists could prescribe – because ICBs are already confident that they can.

The model “was very much in partnership with our GP colleagues,” Soo told attendees.

“Where we had that absolute joint working in partnership, looking at opportunity for the right care in the right place for the right person, that was fantastic,” she shared.

She added that the most success was found in areas where community pharmacy had built strong partnerships with local GP practices.

4 Buy-in from patients must be prioritised

Soo acknowledged that work with patients was required in order to get their buy-in for the services that pharmacy could provide.

This meant extended hours and Saturday opening in some areas, she said.

She also noted that, for longer-term conditions, having GPs explain to patients that they could access care from pharmacies going forward was helpful in creating buy-in.

“There was almost the validation, from the patient's point of view, that this was an appropriate route,” she said.

Soo explained that, at the end of the pilot, 96% of patients said that the services provided had met their needs, 93% said that they would use the service again, and 78% reported that it had meant they had not needed to visit their GP.

Being able to have a “one-stop shop” was helpful in the patient’s view, she suggested.

Soo added: “That was what was really coming forward: that patients could be seen with one clinical intervention and not then fed on to a secondary, where we [would] have to start again, and have a conversation again with the same triage.”

She added that a GP mentor within the ICB was on hand throughout the pilot, to show pharmacists that they weren’t alone.

“The processes are what is key, and working with our GP parters really makes a difference,” Soo said.