Community pharmacies are offering an increased range of services to support and care for people in the community. It is essential that they are able to record and share vital information about a person’s care with GP practices and other services.

By doing this digitally using standards, we can ensure that care professionals and citizens have timely access to relevant information, leading to better, safer and more personalised care in the community.

The purpose of the standard is to support the expanding use of community pharmacies and pharmacists providing services as part of the NHS, which in England are under the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF). The standard will provide consistency in recording information which can be shared with other parts of the health and care system and support a more integrated overall care system. It will support people by integrating information about their care from all parts of the system including community pharmacy.

• the information that should be recorded in a community pharmacy
• the information which should be sent to the person’s general practice about the services provided to be added to their primary care record and potentially with shared care records

• Improved communication methods support community pharmacy to take on a greater range of clinical services to reduce burden on other parts of the health and care system and ensures that the clinical contribution of community pharmacists is visible to the wider NHS
• Timely sharing of clinically relevant data in relation to pharmacy services undertaken to other NHS providers
• Transfer of standardised coded data sets to patients’ primary care health record
• A more comprehensive patient health record with the inclusion of clinically relevant outcomes from pharmacy services, which has the potential to improve medication safety and support medicines optimisation
• Reduced risk of errors and administrative burden due to elimination of paper templates and transfer of information through non-direct routes into patients’ primary care health record

The standard supports the English Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (2019-2024). Some aspects of it could be relevant for other UK nations. It is for all ages including children

• New medicine service
• Appliance use review
• Vaccine administration
• Community pharmacy consultation service (CPCS)
  • CPCS emergency supply of medications
  • CPCS minor illness
• Smoking cessation
• Blood pressure check
• Contraception
• Hepatitis C
• Discharge Medicines Service

The standard defines the information which should be recorded in the community pharmacy across all the services listed above. Some data items are shown as mandatory, these are kept to a minimum and this information must be recorded in the pharmacy.

There are also some optional data items. After contact with the person, information should be sent to the their GP. The implementation guidance document contains tables which show the information that should be sent to the GP for each of the services.