Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to facilitate engagement between GPs and community pharmacies as part of the Government’s plan to refer patients with minor illnesses from NHS 111 to pharmacies.

The Digital Minor Illness Referral Service, being piloted in the North East, London, Devon and the East Midlands, means that patients can and already are being referred from NHS 111 to community pharmacy for support and advice with minor illnesses. The NHS Long Term Plan includes an ambition to build on this, to further integrate community pharmacy into the health and care system to enable and encourage more collaborative working alongside other local National Health Service providers. To achieve this, it outlines the development of pharmacy connection schemes designed to facilitate the referral of patients to community pharmacy from other parts of the health and care system, including general practice.

The Government has been clear that it recognises the opportunity to better utilise community pharmacy to help more people in the community and is committed to working with the sector to make this a reality. The Department, with NHS England, has recently begun negotiations to determine the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework for 2019/20 and beyond. These are confidential negotiations and as such we are unable to provide further detail at this time.