Guide to the New Health Care System

The Department of health has published a guide to the new healthcare system. The document clearly describes the new healthcase system and the main bodies which operate within it. … more

RPS medicines optimisation principles

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) has published "Medicines Optimisation: helping patients maje the most of medicines", providing four guiding principles to help front-line professionals in England support patients to improve their quality of life and outcomes from better use of medicines. … more

PHARMACY WEEKLY E-COMMUNICATION FOR PHARMACIES IN DEVON 1st May 2013

The latest weekly e-communication from the Area Team of NHS England has been received. … more

NHS 111 in Devon

As you may be aware NHS 111 will be the new 24 hours a day, 365 days a year helpline for urgent health needs. It is not a replacement for 999, or a patient contacting their own practice direct. It will however replace NHS Direct at the end of June 2013. … more

Public Health Contracts 2013-14 with Local Authorities

Copies of the Contracts and specifications have now been received for Devon County Council, Plymouth City Council and Torbay Council. … more

The new health and care system - a briefing from PSNC

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Managing medicines in care homes - apply to be a member of the guidance development group for NICE good practice guidance

NICE is currently seeking to recruit a Chair and members of a guidance development group (GDG) for the production of NICE good practice guidance on managing medicines in care homes.
All applications need to be submitted by 5pm Monday 20 May … more

PHARMACY WEEKLY E-COMMUNICATION FOR PHARMACIES IN DEVON

4th April 2013 - Following the changes within the NHS we would like to introduce the new Pharmacy Area Team at NHS England (the name has just been changed from the NHS Commissioning Board) that community pharmacies will deal with.  … more

Launch of the Devon LPC Diabetes MUR - the first

The launch of the MUR plus will take place on 20th June 2013 and will be open to all pharmacies in Plymouth that are currently working towards Healthy Living Pharmacy status. The speaker will be diabetologist consultant Mr Patrick English (NHS Plymouth Hospital Trust). … more

Important Notice Pre-Acceptance Waste Audits

Pharmacy was given until July 2013 to complete their first waste audits, and many of you will also know that PSNC has been developing an audit tool, to make this as straightforward as possible for contractors to complete. … more

Devon, Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Area Team of the NHS Commissioning Board - Contact Details

As you will be aware from 1st April 2013 the NHS Commissioning Board (NHS CB) will take over responsibility for commissioning primary care services from GPs, dentists, pharmacists and optometrists. … more

Extension to the NMS

The NHS Commissioning Board has agreed to extend the funding for the NMS for six months. This means that community pharmacies can continue to recruit new patients to the service up until September 30th and will receive payment for these patients even where the service is completed in October or November 2013. … more

How To Do A Quality Asthma MUR: Access Inhaler Health Professional

The positive evidence to date has indicated that your patients can really benefit from a quality astham MUR … more

The new NHS forum held in Plymouth on 11th March 2013

Over 75 people attended the second in a series of events to be held across Devon to inform pharmacists about the changes the NHS is undergoing. Speakers included representatives from the new NHS Commissioning Board Area Team, West Devon CCG, Public Health and Medicines Optimisation. … more

Resources for A Health Chat - Plymouth Pharmacies

The resources are available following the evening held at The Copthorne Hotel, Plymouth on 6th March 2013. … more

The Electronic prescription Service in Devon Pharmacies

Devon LPC have prepared "A Quick Guide to EPS 2" for those community pharmcies in Devon preparing to go live with EPS2. … more

Diabetes MUR Toolkit - now endorsed by RPS

Devon Local Pharmaceutical Committee is proud to announce that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has endorsed the Diabetes Medicines Use Review Tool-kit. This is fantastic news for the toolkit which was designed by Devon LPC in association with two local Clinical Commissioning Groups, Diabetes UK, Sanofi Diabetes, PSNC and NPA. … more

Public Health Community Pharmacy Contract 2013-14

Community pharmacies in Devon will recently have received a letter detailing the process for the transfer of public health service commissioning to the local authorities. … more

Important feedback request: Evaluation of alcohol brief interventions in pharmacy

The November alcohol brief interventions that ran in 17 Plymouth HLP pharmacies in November completed over 500 individual interventions. The intervention was to raise the awareness of the harmful affects of higher levels
of alcohol consumption on health. … more

FP57 Forms - New contact details

Up to date contact details for ordering FP57 forms are as follows; … more

NMS A Service To Sell To GP Commissioning Groups

PSNC released the interim results from their study of NMS as facilitied by PharmOutcomes (formerly Pharmabase). The study showed that the pharmacist intervention decreased the percentage of patients who were not compliant to their medicines from 18.2% (at 14 days) to just over 10% (at 28 days). This improvement will support patients in gaining better thereapeutic outcomes from their medicines, and in doing this reduce unnecessary hospitalisation of patients, an outcome that will really interest GP commissioning groups! … more

The use of antivirals in seasonal flu - NICE guidance triggered

This is to inform you that a letter has been sent from the
CMO/CPHO informing GPs and community pharmacies that antiviral medicines may now be prescribed for the prophylaxis and treatment of influenza at NHS expense, in accordance with NICE guidance and Schedule 2 to the National Health Service (General Medical Services Contracts) (Prescription of drugs etc) Regulations 2004), commonly known as the Grey List or Selected List Scheme
(SLS). … more

New Year Special Smokefree Newsletter

The latest newsletter is available which includes some important messages regarding upcoming campaigns. … more

Plymouth Smoking Cessation Service Claim Simplification

The LPC has been in discussions with the Stop Smoking service in Plymouth to try and make the claiming process for the smoking scheme a lot simpler and easier to do. … more

Anti-coagulant workshop - training documents

Following the very succesful anti-coagulant workshops, held across Devon, the training documents have been added to the website.
 … more

Healthy Living Pharmacies in Plymouth - Brief Alcohol Intervention Project

We are very excited about the forthcoming project in Plymouth, when the pharmacy teams will be making brief alcohol interventions. … more

Know Your Skin Campaign - Plymouth Healthy Living Pharmacies

The report on the outcomes of the Plymouth based Know Your Skin public health campaign is now available. … more

Effective Practice Committee Prescribing Recommendations

A summary of the latest NHS Devon Effective Practice Committee prescribing recommendations is available. … more

A blueprint for successful diabetes targeted MURs - Pharmacy Show launch 30th September 2012

Mark Stone(LPC pharmacist and Independent Prescriber) and Fawz Farhan (Director MediaPharm & CPDEasy.com) revealed the tool kit to and audience of around 200 people, and explained to the attendees why it was important that pharmacists engage patients who have diabetes about their medicines. … more

Devon Doctors Limited

Devon Doctors have contacted the LPC as they are receiving a number of calls during the day from patients wanting to access medical services in hours who have been given the Devon Doctors number by Community Pharmacies. … more

Western Locality Clinical Commissioning Handbook

The Western Locality is part of the North, East, West Devon shadow Clinical Commissioning Group and as such this Clinical Commissioning handbook has been specifically written to help local clinicians understand the arrangements that are currently being set up for the future clinically led commissioning model.  … more

South Devon & Torbay Clinical Commissioning Group

Details of the South Devon & Torbay CCG have been published. … more

EPS

Please see the link to the EPS section on Connecting for Health which has very useful information for pharmacies. … more

Repiratory MURs - Plymouth

To view the MUR information and documentation for the Plymouth respiratory MUR project; … more

Action plan for respiratory disease treatment published

A new action plan for treatment of respiratory problems is set out in guidance published today for the NHS. … more

Contact details for Devon PCTs

The up to date contact details for the cluster of PCTs in Devon have been received. … more

LPC Briefing Paper - Branded To Generic Switches, A Saving At A Cost

Devon LPC, in association with the South West LPCs have produced a briefing paper on the effect of branded generic switches in community pharmacy. … more

Sex, Drugs and Pharmacy's Role

The Chemist and Druggist has published some top tips for pharmacists offering sexual health services to their customers.  … more

Want to stop smoking?

Ask your pharmacist - You are four times more likely to quit using a NHS Stop Smoking Service … more

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PSNC news

PSNC Study on NCSO Claims

In recent months, PSNC has been hearing from contractors experiencing unprecedented problems with obtaining products in short supply or at the Drug Tariff… more

GPhC remove superintendent pharmacist from professional register for falsifying prescriptions

The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) made a determination on the 29th April 2013 that the superintendent pharmacist of a company be removed from the… more

May CPN is Online

The May edition of PSNC Community Pharmacy News is now available. This month CPN features:Community Pharmacy Conference 2013Update on NCSOChanges to Part… more