‘Excessive’ GP pharmacist workload leaving safety ‘gaps’, warns CQC
The healthcare regulator has deemed that one Leicestershire GP practice “requires improvement”, due in part to “staff shortages” in its pharmacy team.
Hockley Farm Medical Practice in Braunstone, Leicester, has been told to make improvements after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found its pharmacy team was insufficiently managing “risks” due to “staff shortages and excessive workloads”.
In a report published last month (July 10), the CQC said that the workload led to “gaps in some areas of work meaning that risks were not always being adequately reviewed”.
“The practice pharmacy team was responsible for completing medication reviews of patients taking regular medicines,” it added.
But the CQC said there was “a lack of information to show what had been reviewed and if discussions had taken place with patients within these reviews”.
It added that some staff had told the regulator that there were “gaps in some areas of medicines optimisation such as conducting structured medication reviews” (SMRs) due to high workloads.
“Safety alerts, staff training, recruitment processes and monitoring patients taking regular medicines were not always reviewed in a timely way,” the inspector found.
At the time of the CQC’s assessment in late April - which rated the practice as “requires improvement” - the regulator said that safety alerts “had not been completed since February 2024” due to “staff shortages within the practice pharmacy team”.
“Not clear”
The CQC also found that there were problems with the practice’s “systems, pathways and transitions” that led to “some gaps…in ensuring patients received the monitoring they required”.
And it said that “it was not clear who had oversight of the pharmacy team or who was responsible for staff training within the practice in the absence of a practice manager”.
C+D approached the practice for comment.
Last week, a consultation of Northern Irish Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) members found that some 90% “were prepared to take industrial action” over inconsistent pay awards by GPs to practice-based pharmacists.
Meanwhile, a Bristol pharmacy owner last week told C+D that the business needed a 40% rent reduction to stay in a health centre with “sky high” rental costs.
