Service delivery examples

Community pharmacy operates on a contractor model similar to other primary care providers such as GP surgeries. This means community pharmacies are usually independent businesses contracted by the NHS to provide certain services. The NHS Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) outlines five different types (3 main services (A,B, and C) and 2 additional ones D, and E) of services that are offered. All of these are important because (again) it allows your community pharmacy to differentiate itself from others in the same geographical area. The website KingsFund explains all this in further details.

The five examples include:

• (a) Essential services – these are the nationally set, mandatory services that community pharmacies must provide as part of their contract with the NHS if they are to operate providing NHS services. It includes the dispensing of medicines and medical appliances, the disposal of unwanted or spare medicines, advising patients on self-care, providing advice on healthy living and providing medicines support following a hospital discharge.
• (b) Advanced services – these are optional services for example "Pharmacy First" that pharmacies can choose to provide. They are nationally set and specified, and the option to provide them is open to all community pharmacies, provided they meet certain minimum requirements.
• (c) Enhanced services – these are optional services such as anticoagulation services that used to be commissioned by primary care trusts. Since the abolition of primary care trusts, only NHS England can commission these. At present this route is not often used as most areas use locally commissioned services to commission these types of optional services.
• (d) Locally commissioned services  – like enhanced services, these are commissioned by public bodies, including clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) or local authorities, to meet the needs of particular local populations outside the nationally set and specified services. Examples of local commissioning from community pharmacies includes sexual health services, needle and syringe exchange services, or smoking cessation services.
• (e) Private services – Alongside services commissioned by the NHS and other public bodies they may also provide services not commissioned by public bodies (private services) for example travel health advice and a weight management service.