Pharmacy services hit the small screen!
AS THE ENGLISH HEALTH SECRETARY, MATT HANCOCK, STATES THAT HE WANTS NHS HEALTHCARE CONSULTATIONS TO BE TELECONSULTATIONS, SCOTLAND IS – ONCE AGAIN – LEADING THE WAY THANKS TO THE INNOVATIVE NEAR ME SCHEME…
A
t a time when access to GP surgeries continues to be restricted, the Near Me
initiative is providing a fantastic opportunity for pharmacists to deliver person-centred care to patients in their own homes or places of work.
Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport Jeane Freeman recently announced that more than £3 million is to be spent on a ‘rapid scaling up’ of NHS facilities for video consultations in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
As a result, the Scottish Government is putting the money into the Near Me system: a video consulting service for outpatient appointments.
‘Near Me has actually been in existence for some time,’ says Clare Morrison, National Near Me Lead for the Scottish government. ‘The Scottish Government procured Attend Anywhere, which is the platform that underpins Near Me, in late 2016 and
8 - SCOTTISH PHARMACIST
some early pilot work started shortly after. Initially, use was focused in remote and rural areas across Scotland, including the development of Near Me in NHS Highland from January 2018. In February this year, the name Near Me was adopted across Scotland.
‘Prior to COVID-19, the service was designed primarily as a hospital outpatient service for remote and rural areas. There was also some limited use in GP practices, but, once the service was scaled up in response to COVID-19, we began to look at how it could be rolled out across community pharmacy.
‘Community pharmacies are particularly well suited to this service as they are generally viewed as the most easily accessible primary care service and patients are used to phoning in to their pharmacies for advice and information. Near Me simply provides a more visual way in which pharmacists can carry out face-
to-face consultations without making direct contact.
‘I initially spoke to the Directors of Pharmacy about how we could use Near Me and also consulted with Community Pharmacy Scotland (CPS) and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland (RPS).
‘We then moved on to testing how the service would work from a practical perspective and initially worked with Jonathan Burton in NHS Forth Valley and Catriona Sinclair in NHS Highland During the first two weeks of June, we tested Near Me in these two community pharmacies and assessed how a pharmacy’s technical readiness could be assessed and how training could be undertaken.
‘The Directors of Pharmacy in NHS Dumfries & Galloway and Tayside also supported similar testing in their areas. Altogether, 44 pharmacies were involved. This was all carried out over a period of one month
because we naturally had to move quite quickly, given the challenges that were being increasingly posed by COVID-19.
‘As a result of the testing that was carried out, we were able to produce draft guidance as to how Near Me could be most effectively implemented in community pharmacy. This included the technical aspect of the service – how it would be set up, for example, and how the patients would find out about it. We also had to assess how it would fit in with the normal workflow in pharmacies.
‘At the end of the test period we took comments on the draft and these were then sent for final approval by Professor Alison Strath from the Scottish government’s pharmacy division and by both CPS and RPS, all of whom endorsed the guidance.
‘The guidance was published at the end of June and was circulated both
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