With Quality Payments on everyone’s minds, Leanne Beverley considers the importance of pharmacies and staff embracing the scheme

We are already in April and the first review date for the new Quality Payments Scheme will soon be upon us. If you work for a multiple, you may be lucky enough to have a large proportion of the work done for you and have targets and timetables in place. But for us small independents, it can appear quite a daunting task.

However, it is imperative that all community pharmacies embrace the scheme to make up a tiny proportion of the projected 12 per cent loss in funding as the cuts really are quite damaging – particularly if you’re not one of the few pharmacies (that’s eight out of 91 in Coventry) eligible for the Pharmacy Access Scheme. 

It is essential that community pharmacists and contractors recognise and utilise the skills of the pharmacy technicians and support staff working with them to lessen the burden that the cuts will bring. 

At Monarch Pharmacy, when the Quality Payments Scheme was launched, I sat down with the responsible pharmacist and we set about creating our own plan of action. We already meet the four gateway criteria, so we looked at each of the other criteria in detail and decided at which review points we would achieve each one, noting whether they could be claimed at one or two review points, the likely time it would take to achieve and what evidence and tasks would be required. We also identified support staff to whom we could delegate tasks, not only to involve them but also to make the process easier for the whole team. All this was put into a timetable, including the criteria, evidence/tasks required, a target date for such tasks (spread out before the actual review date), review dates claimed and tick boxes for each. 

The scheme is very transparent and while some criteria still await the announcement of more guidance (e.g. NHS 111), with a specific, manageable plan in place to jump through each hoop, it means that meeting each criteria becomes much more achievable.  

All of our staff, rather than the specified 80 per cent, have become Dementia Friends and we shared this on our pharmacy social media pages. The safeguarding requirement has been met by all of our registered pharmacy staff utilising free CPPE training and one of our trainee pharmacy technicians has taken on the role of health champion. 

The new asthma referral process has enabled us to talk to local surgeries about what we are doing, and all dispensing staff now have a better awareness of asthma control and types of inhalers used, resulting in a better service for our patients. The involvement of staff and other healthcare professionals throughout the Quality Payments process is paramount.

Leanne Beverley is an accuracy checking pharmacy technician and supervisor at Monarch Pharmacy, Coventry. She is an NVQ/BTEC assessor for pharmacy training providers, including NPA and Scientia Skills, and is the business development officer for the Association of Pharmacy Technicians UK (APTUK).