The British Medical Association (BMA) has asked pharmacists who are partners in GP practices whether they support collective action by GPs in protest against the latest GP funding deal.

The move comes as GP contractors and partners in England await the outcome of a non-statutory ballot that closed today (July 29) to determine whether GPs will take protest action.

Read more: Pharmacies to sound alarms in unison in September protest

The union is in a dispute with NHS England (NHSE) over the 2024/25 GP contract, after 99.2% of BMA GP and GP registrar members voted to reject it back in March.

If the ballot is successful, collective action will take place from August 1 – although the BMA has stopped short of calling for industrial action such as a strike.

“We want to deliver a new contract for the profession across England that provides the investment needed to transform, rebuild and reinvigorate general practice”, the BMA said.

Read more: Pharmacies to ‘turn out the lights’ on June 20 in ‘emergency’ protest

BMA guidance added that participating GPs “should enact these actions across the whole practice team working with their practice managers”.

It asked pharmacists, alongside other non-GP practice partners like nurses and physiotherapists, to sign a form to “show [their] support” for the BMA’s GP campaign in England.

 

“Will not result in contract breach”

 

The BMA set out nine actions that GP practices can take, adding that they can “start slowly and build incrementally or do all of them from day one”.

It stressed that GPs “do not need permission to do any of these actions” and that they “will not result in contract breach”.

The BMA added that this is not “strike action” but collective action “to apply pressure to the government to negotiate positive changes to the GP contract and/or agree a new substantive national…contract across the next parliament”.

Read more: GPs switch off update patient record function in new Pharmacy First IT twist

Among other protest actions, it urged GPs to:

• Switch off GP Connect functionality that permits third-party providers such as pharmacies from entering data into patient records
• “Limit daily patient contacts per clinician” to 25 and divert patients to local urgent care settings once daily maximum capacity is reached
• “Serve notice” on any voluntary services that “plug local commissioning gaps”
• “Withdraw permission” for data sharing agreements that exclusively use data not for direct care and “freeze sign-up” to any new data sharing agreements or local data sharing platforms
• “Switch off medicines optimisation software” embedded by the local commissioner “for the purposes of system financial savings and/or rationing”, rather than the “clinical benefit” of patients
• Defer signing declarations of completion for “better digital telephony” and “simpler online requests” until further BMA guidance

 

Pharmacy protest?

 

It comes as the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) revealed to C+D earlier this month that pharmacies across the UK are set to sound an alarm or ring a bell in a coordinated protest action on September 19.

This follows a “day of protest action” on June 20 where pharmacies turned their lights out and staff wore black to highlight the “emergency across the community pharmacy sector” in the UK.

Read more: Cat M clawback: Pharmacies hit with £9m monthly reimbursement reduction

However, the NPA has said that it is “not currently in a position to recommend strike action” after taking “legal advice”.

Meanwhile, the pharmacy negotiator has today announced that mistakes in government calculations of Category M reimbursement mean that the sector will face clawbacks to correct an overpayment of around £9m per month.