PSNC Pharmacy Advice Audit
PSNC Pharmacy Advice Audit
2022 audit
The 2022 audit has now closed. Thank you to all the community pharmacy contractors and their teams who took take part. We have begun analysing the results ready for use in negotiations.
Background
The Pharmacy Advice Audit asks pharmacy teams to record information about the informal healthcare advice that they are giving over the course of a single day (or until a minimum number of consultations is reached), with the results providing a critical temperature check on how people are continuing to rely on community pharmacies.
This 2022 audit is the third that pharmacies have been asked to take part in, and the results will once again provide critical evidence for use in PSNC’s funding discussions with HM Government and the NHS.
Why it’s important
Last year’s Advice Audit highlighted the scale of the informal consultations that were taking place in pharmacies during the pandemic. The huge number of pharmacies taking part in the audit meant that we had compelling evidence for use in our negotiations, and the audit results were also critical in helping to persuade MPs to support our case for COVID-19 costs.
We would be very grateful to anyone able to take part in this year’s audit – the more pharmacies who are able to do so, the stronger our evidence is.
PSNC’s Director of Pharmacy Funding, Mike Dent, described the importance of the audit in gathering data for negotiations and campaigning work in a recent video update. Watch the video below.
How to do it
As with the two previous audits, pharmacies taking part will be asked to record data about patients coming into pharmacies seeking informal advice over the course of a single day (or until a minimum number of consultations has been reached). Contractors will notice some minor changes to the audit template this year to help us begin to better understand the sorts of consultations that pharmacies are now giving.
The audit period has been extended but results must be submitted by 23.59 on Friday 11th March 2022. As before, pharmacies are asked to carry it out on a single day, or until they reach 20 consultations. To successfully complete the audit, pharmacy teams will need to:
- Record patient/customer interactions where advice was given by either a non-pharmacist team member and/or a pharmacist.
- Carry this out for at least one day, recording all consultations. (To be a valid audit, each pharmacy needs to achieve at least 20 consultations, therefore a small number will need to continue for a second day.)
- Estimate the percentage of consultations that were recorded during that time period (this is to recognise that some consultations may be missed).
- (Optional) Rate your confidence in the advice given to help identify areas for improvement to reflect on post-audit.
- Enter the data on PharmOutcomes. (If a contractor has not used PharmOutcomes before, log in details can be obtained by sending a message to the PharmOutcomes helpdesk.)
Resources
The audit and its accompanying paperwork have been designed to be as straightforward for pharmacy teams as they can be. Full instructions on how to take part are outlined in the guidance below.
Team Briefing Sheet
The briefing sheet sets out the criteria for inclusion, what needs to be recorded and how to reflect on your pharmacy’s results. It also answers some frequently asked questions as identified during testing with a small number of pharmacies.
Audit Template
The audit template provides a simple way to record the required data, making things smoother for data entry onto PharmOutcomes.
2021 Pharmacy Advice Audit
Summary and key findings
Early in 2021, 5,830 community pharmacies took part in a PSNC audit to try to quantify the number of informal patient consultations happening in their pharmacy. The pharmacies recorded all consultations over one day (or for however long it took them to reach 20 consultations). The pharmacies carried out the audit between 25 January and 12 February 2021 and between them they recorded data on 114,898 patient consultations. Advice following the dispensing of a prescription, along with formal referrals from the NHS Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, were not included.
The audit enabled PSNC to measure the reliance that the public has had on pharmacies through the COVID-19 pandemic, and the additional pressure that this has put on pharmacy teams. This data will help demonstrate the sector’s value to the public and the NHS and support PSNC’s negotiations with HM Government.
- On average, pharmacies undertake 17 consultation per day / 1,125,540 consultations per week / more than 58 million per year.
- Each week, just under 130,000 informal referrals from General Practice and NHS11 are received into pharmacy.
- Every week pharmacies provided advice to over 730,000 people (nearly 38 million people per year) seeking advice for symptoms.
- Every week pharmacies provide advice to over 263,000 people (13.6 million people per year) seeking advice about an existing medical condition.
- On average, each consultation took just over 5 minutes – this means 90 minutes per day are spent providing these clinical consultations.
- Almost a quarter (24%) of the pharmacy consultations also included advice and support related to COVID-19 and these consultations took on average 20% longer than a non-COVID-19 consultation.
- If the community pharmacy had not been there, 50% of patients reported they would have visited their GP, resulting in an additional 74 appointments in each GP practice each week in England.
- An additional 70,000 people (3.3. million people per year) would go to A&E or an NHS walk-in centre every week if they could not get advice from their pharmacy.
Resources on the 2021 audit findings
PSNC Pharmacy Advice Audit 2021: Full Report
A complete report containing all results and analysis of the data gathered as part of the 2021 Pharmacy Advice Audit.
PSNC Pharmacy Advice Audit 2021: A summary of findings
A summary of the findings from the 2021 Pharmacy Advice Audit.
Infographic aimed at MPs: Community Pharmacy Consultations Update
A one-page infographic featuring the key statistics from PSNC’s 2021 Pharmacy Advice Audit findings.
Social media tiles: (click to enlarge, right-click to save image)
Summer 2020 Pharmacy Advice Audit
Summary and key findings
In June and July 2020 more than 9,400 pharmacies in England took part in PSNC’s audit of the informal patient consultations that happen in community pharmacy – these are consultations happening outside the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (CPCS) or any other commissioned services.
Over a single day, pharmacies recorded a total of 198,043 patient consultations, which revealed that:
- The average staff time per consultation was just over 5 minutes;
- Around 10% (approx. 20,900) of the consultations were initiated with the non-pharmacist and referred to the pharmacist – this meant for longer total consultation times;
- Consultations initiated with a pharmacist took an average of 5.3 minutes pharmacist time;
- Consultations initiated with a non-pharmacist took an average of 4 minutes, with 19% referred to the community pharmacist where on average a further 4.3 minutes was spent with the patient; and
- Around 75 minutes per day, per pharmacy, is spent providing these consultations.
Resources on the 2020 audit findings
PSNC Pharmacy Advice Audit 2020 – Full Report
A complete report containing all results and analysis of the data gathered as part of the Pharmacy Advice Audit.
PSNC Briefing 027/20: Summary of the findings from PSNC’s Pharmacy Advice Audit
A summary of the findings from the Pharmacy Advice Audit run by PSNC in June and July 2020.
Clinical Advice in Community Pharmacies: Findings from a national audit
A PowerPoint presentation making use of the findings from the PSNC Pharmacy Advice Audit to showcase community pharmacy’s value to key stakeholders.
Infographic
A one-page infographic featuring the key statistics from the audit findings. Three version are available to download and use.
Image Infographic: Community Pharmacy Consultations (JPG)
A4 Digital Infographic: Community Pharmacy Consultations
A4 Print Infographic: Community Pharmacy Consultations
Social media tiles (click to enlarge, right-click to save image)
