Background

The Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (CPCS) was launched in October 2019 as a national advanced service. Over 10,000 pharmacies are offering this service to Patients. This service includes two key components – the emergency supply of medicines and minor illness consultation. Following recent development work, GP clinical systems are able to receive structured data from community pharmacy systems regarding the CPCS emergency supply of medicines and vaccination notifications. This development opportunity will expand this capability to include the receipt of structured data following a minor illness consultation.

Minor illness consultation referrals into pharmacy are received from NHS 111 and, since November 2020, from General Practice.

This development supports the interoperability agenda by aligning the receipt of CPCS minor illness consultation PEMs with that of CPCS emergency supply of medicines.

Outline Plan

To support the NHS Winter plan, and the continued expansion of the CPCS, the NHS are seeking to progress the development and assurance of the post event message (PEM) for the Minor Illness component of the CPCS service. This continues the intent to improve the interoperability between community pharmacy and GP systems to support service delivery in primary care, building on previous successes including the CPCS emergency supply message and vaccination notifications and offering significant benefit to GP Practices.

Existing CPCS Pharmacy system Suppliers will be given the opportunity to develop their systems to send a structured PEM minor illness FHIR message to GP systems.  

Timescale for completion: April 2023

Please refer to the specification below for further details.

• Digital Medicine - FHIR API - NHS Digital

Summary of Change

GP systems able to receive structured Patient data from a community pharmacy following a minor illness consultation. The data captured and sent aligns with the Professional Record Standards Body data standard for community pharmacy information flows. The data will be shared via FHIR utilising existing MESH capabilities.

Full Specification

Digital Medicines and Pharmacy FHIR Payload v2.0.1

Assurance Approach

Summary

1. Functional assurance will be performed by the NHS Digital Solutions Assurance team

2. Clinical assurance approach will be performed by the NHS Digital clinical team as follows:

Test in Test

The Supplier will be expected to run a set of test scenarios covering a range of clinical situations in a test environment (INT). The version of the system that is to be tested must be as close to the live version as possible i.e. should include all the functionality and capabilities which would be expected in the live product. The tests will cover the end to end process including an incoming referral for Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (CPCS) minor illness, recording of Patient consultation details and sending of the post event message to the Patient’s registered GP. Other elements such as an onward referral, fall-back processes (NHSmail) and negative tests may also be covered. The testing may be witnessed where appropriate, or the Supplier may be required to submit test evidence for review by an NHSD/E clinician.

Test in Live

The Supplier will be expected to run a set of test scenarios covering a range of clinical situations in the live environment using synthetic Patient data. The tests will cover the end to end process including an incoming referral for CPCS minor illness, recording of Patient consultation details and sending of the post event message to the Patient’s registered GP. Other elements such as an onward referral, fall-back processes (NHSmail) and negative tests may also be covered. The testing may be witnessed where appropriate, or the Supplier may be required to submit test evidence for review by an NHSD/E clinician. Many of these tests will be a repeat of those carried out in the test environment. There may be additional elements that could not tested in the test environment that are covered at this stage. The Supplier will need to identify a live site to facilitate this testing.

All system Suppliers will be required to submit the required clinical safety documentation and have sign-off by their Clinical Safety Officer (CSO) as per DCB0129 at each stage of testing for review by NHS Digital Clinical Safety Group (CSG) who are responsible for approving Clinical Authority to Release (CATR).