The Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) this week (December 2) called for pharmacy hypertension screening services to be expanded in its submission to the government’s “10-year health plan” consultation to “overhaul the NHS”.
The membership body said that community pharmacies provided “over 1.7 million blood pressure checks last year” and estimated they “could screen up to 5 million people a year” if the service was expanded – three times the number.
Hypertension is detected by measuring a patient’s blood pressure and the expansion of this service would “enable the prevention of more ill health”, the CCA said.
“Given that cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading causes of premature death, there is an urgent need to scale up” the pharmacy hypertension case-finding service, it added.
Read more: GPs and pharmacies must work in ‘joined-up way,’ says BMA
The CCA’s consultation response also called for an expansion of pharmacy vaccination programmes and “strongly [recommended] an expansion of the existing Pharmacy First service”, among other service expansions.
And CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison stressed that “pharmacies are absolutely integral to delivering the shifts to prevention and care closer to the community”.
“The network is ready to do even more – but the foundations need fixing,” he said.
GP vote
It comes as GP leaders last month voted in favour of pharmacy blood pressure checks being “terminated with immediate effect and the money put into pharmacy dispensing fees” instead.
The motion was “overwhelmingly carried”, meaning it will now become official BMA policy.
GP leaders also called for Pharmacy First to be “immediately discontinued” and funds “redirected” into general practice.
Read more: Pharmacy group urges BMA to reject ‘short-sighted’ GP vote on pharmacy BP checks
But pharmacy leaders branded it “massively disappointing” and “terribly short-sighted”.
Meanwhile, the government launched a months-long consultation in October urging the “entire nation” to help shape plans to improve the NHS under a “10-year health plan”.
“Responses will shape the government’s 10-year health plan to fix the broken health service” and “overhaul” the NHS, it said at the time.