Pharmacy Daily | Pharmacist triage success

A PHARMACIST-LED triage pilot at a British general practice clinic is freeing up 34 hours of GP-time each week, and slashing waiting times.

Three months into the year-long trial, the clinic is considering expanding it to provide triage services for its out-of-hours service on Sat mornings, The Pharmaceutical Journal reports.

As part of the program, patients at the St John's Way Medical Centre in Islington, North London, have been advised to contact the clinic by phone to make an appointment, when they call the GP pharmacist assesses their needs and directs them to an alternative service if they do not need to be seen by a GP.

Prior to the start of the trial the clinic employed two GPs to triage walk-in patients, however, with the pharmacist one GP has been freed up to provide clinical care.

"A three-month review of the project has shown positive results," a spokesperson for the clinic said.

"We have managed to reduce the waiting time for patients to see a GP on the same day and have also reduced the total number of same-day face-to-face contacts with a GP."

Islington GP Federation Lead Pharmacist, Soumia Gillam, said the trial's initial success had prompted consideration of extending the service to the I:HUB out-of-hours GP clinic, noting that more than one-in-five calls to the service related to medication queries, while a further 13% related to minor injuries or suspected urinary tract infections.

"About 40% of those [I:HUB] patients could be managed by a clinical pharmacist," Gillam said.

"They do not necessarily need to see a GP."