Published: 07/12/23

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has opened a public consultation on proposed changes to primary legislation relating to supervision in the pharmacy profession.

The policy drivers behind the proposed changes are in line with the CPS Vision in that the core aim is to support the best use of the skill mix in pharmacies and to free up pharmacist time wherever possible to support a focus on clinical service delivery. However, the detail of how DHSC propose to achieve our shared aims is significantly different to the current CPS position, which we have highlighted in our response.

In summary, the consultation is seeking views on the following approach:

1. Allow the responsible pharmacist (RP) to authorise a pharmacy technician to either carry out or to supervise others in carrying out the preparation, assembly, dispensing, sale and supply of P and POM medicines.

2. Allow the responsible pharmacist to authorise any member of the team to hand out checked and bagged prescriptions to patients or patient representatives.

3. Make consequential amendments to other regulations to support 1 and 2 above and bring parts of the Medicines Act (1968) and Human Medicines Regulations (2012) in line with more recent legislation

   • Note: this includes a proposal to change the regulation around P and POM supplies as being allowed “on” registered pharmacy premises to being allowed “at or from” registered pharmacy premises. There is no current CPS position on this change, which can be debated during this Board session.

NB - The elements of supervision that are not under consultation at present are remote supervision (No current CPS position) and the detail of how long an RP can be absent from the pharmacy premises (currently 2 hours, with the CPS position being to remove a set limit and enable local decision-making). The GPhC already has the power to set the regulations around the Responsible Pharmacist role, and will consult on these issues in due course.

The consultation makes clear that the changes to legislation would be followed by a period of time before enaction to allow the regulator (GPhC) and professional body (RPS) to produce relevant regulations and guidance for implementation, respectively.

The CPS Council and Board have previously undertaken workshops on this topic. Our current position can be summarised as follows:

• The core principle of one RP to one pharmacy premises should remain

• Assembly of prescriptions should not need to be supervised/have an RP signed in

• Handout of prescriptions  should require an RP to be signed in but not necessarily present

• RP absence should be determined locally (i.e. get rid of 2-hour limit)

Our consultation response is included below - please note that answers have a 350 word limit, hence the relative brevity of the answers.

The full consultation and related documents can be found here. For reference, the consultation closes on the 29th of February.

If you have any further comments on any aspect of the draft statutory instrument, please provide it here

Some of the wording in the draft order or subsequent guidance may need to be refined to avoid potential misunderstanding. We understand the policy intent to be that the RP on any given day can authorise the handing out of previously checked and bagged prescriptions that have been made up at any point. However, the wording in section 220B reads as though a pharmacist may only authorise a person to hand out only what has been dispensed by or under their supervision. This is impractical in practice, and the mechanism of forward authorisation for an unspecified time in the future to an unknown team is also problematic. The paragraph may also neglect to take into account that it has been an authorised pharmacy technician that has supervised elements of the dispensing process (as per proposal 1). This should all be reviewed and either changed in line with the policy intent or made clear in subsequent guidance.