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NHS Pharmacy First Scotland allows community pharmacies to give people expert help in treating common clinical conditions. Pharmacy teams offer advice, treatment, or referral to other healthcare teams if required.
What is Pharmacy First Scotland?
NHS Pharmacy First Scotland is a service that allows community pharmacies to provide expert assistance in treating conditions such as sore throats, earaches, and cold sores, as well as common clinical conditions like urinary tract infections (UTIs). Pharmacy teams offer advice, treatment, or referral to other healthcare professionals if necessary.
This service helps people access the appropriate care in the right location, eliminating the need to visit their GP practice or local Accident and Emergency Department for non-urgent treatment.
How Do I Claim Consultation Fees on Pharmacy First?
We have had some enquiries from pharmacy teams asking how to claim Consultation Only for Pharmacy First, and in particular, how to ensure the 3x multiplier is applied to the UTI and Impetigo Claims.
The following will give you the detail – if you need any further information, please contact enquiries@cps.scot
“Standard” NHS PFS consultations (i.e. not involving a PGD)
You use the “MAS” module on your PMR to record your actions (in time, this will be renamed to NHS Pharmacy First Scotland)
The system will perform an eligibility check, searching for a CHI number in the first instance. This will return one of three statuses:
Eligible – you will be able to proceed with recording the consultation
Not eligible – this status will be returned where it is clear that the person is not eligible for the service. Your PMR system will default to discontinuing the consultation, but you will note that there is an override option built into future-proof the service in the event of any unforeseen policy changes.
Unknown – this will happen if there is no CHI found, and you will be asked whether you want to proceed. You should use your knowledge of the eligibility criteria and the patient to decide (e.g. Yes if a member of the travelling community, homeless etc, No if a tourist visiting Scotland). If you do proceed, a dummy CHI (3999999993) and GP code (99999) will be added to the record to allow you to record the interaction and make a claim.
Record the details and outcome of the consultation (advice only, referral or treatment supplied)
Send your claim
Add any further consultation details to the patient’s PMR record as required
Consultations involving a PGD
An eligibility check function is not yet available for these UCF modules, but this may be added in time.
Select the correct UCF module depending on the patient and their condition. You can choose between Impetigo and UTI, and for each of these, there is the option of a module for patients who are registered with a GP in Scotland (UTI – Scot. GP Registered), and one for those who live in Scotland but are not currently registered with a GP (UTI – Scot. Resident, no GP).
You should only ever use this second option where you have not been able to find a CHI number using the tools available to you.
If you are prescribing an item to treat the condition, proceed as you normally would.
If you have provided advice only or have made an onward referral, the next step is where things will differ depending on the PMR system you are using.
You can either select these options as an outcome as you have been able to with MAS consultations for many years, or there will be a temporary workaround that will see you “prescribe” a service claim in the form of a ‘dummy’ item.
For example, in some PMR systems when you give advice only, you would record this by proceeding to prescribe an item, selecting “Pharmacy First: Consultation only” as the item and setting the prescribed quantity to 1.
The same is true of making a claim for a referral, with the relevant prescribable item being listed as “Pharmacy First: Refer to GP”
You then add any further consultation details to the patient’s PMR record as required by the PGD to finish off the consultation.
Details of which PMR systems are employing which claim method for UTI and Impetigo consultations and referrals at the launch of NHS PFS are included below.
Remember: where in place, this workaround is temporary, and only for UTI and Impetigo services. Do not prescribe “Pharmacy First: Consultation only” or “Pharmacy First: Refer to GP” under any other circumstances. We will update this information as PMR functionality develops.
⬅️ National Service
Whilst core services must be delivered by all community pharmacies on the pharmaceutical list, the National suite of services is optional. That said, the vast majority of pharmacies in Scotland offer all of these services.
The NHS Pharmacy First Scotland Service approved list of products has been updated as of 1st of April 2024.