The gap between health care and social care is being narrowed in North-East London.

The new funded pharmacy service, SelfCare Pharmacy, will commission a pharmacist to conduct a full assessment of the physical and mental state of a patient and help support patients with long-term conditions.

Plans for the SelfCare Pharmacy scheme are well underway with over 60 pharmacies in North-East London already trained up for the initiative.

The project, expected to launch soon, was initially the brainchild of Hemant Patel, secretary of the North-East London LPC, now working with a wide range of local stakeholders.

‘SelfCare Pharmacy is there to empower patients to accept responsibility for caring for themselves, with the expert support of pharmacy staff and pharmacists. We have a potentially ageing population; the number of people who will have long-term conditions will continue to increase.’

The scheme will focus on four key areas: mental health, diabetes, respiratory care and cardiovascular health.

Pharmacists will look holistically at people’s health and wellbeing. Pharmacies will receive £32.50 for each intervention, with a typical consultation lasting 10 to 15 minutes, he said.

‘Patients will be assessed for bio-psycho-social needs. This includes age and race, lifestyle and the social factors that affect people’s health, such as debt or lack of exercise and domestic violence, for example. So, what we are trying to do is bring these factors together and see what impact it has on people’s physical health.’

It’s the first time in the world that a practice like this is being provided in pharmacies, he said.

‘The scheme takes physical health, and impacting social factors into account, as well as the psychological status of the person, and empowers patients to prioritise the things in their heads, so they can use their own resources to maintain the discipline that is necessary to achieve an outcome.’

The inclusion of social factors is the unique to this scheme. If pharmacists feel a particular problem is beyond their individual remit they will refer to a specialist in that field.

‘All we are trying to do is help them by referring them to an appropriate person, we have agreements in place with the local authorities and pharmacists will be recognised as expert referrers.

‘We are trying to develop an electronic referral form, so there is a record of every referral and hopefully we’ll get the feedback from them to say that the patient turned up and what happened. Local authorities are so incredibly enthusiastic – they are the ones who helped us develop the bio-psycho-social assessment, and then in terms of expert referral they’re really happy with that. They can see what we are trying to do,’ said Mr Patel. The assessment is computerised and easy to use and interpretation of data is also made easy and the new training contributes to the highest standards of care, he added

Patients in the scheme will be given a pharmacy score, with a care plan that will initially last a year.

Pharmacists wanting to take part in the initiative have taken part in special evening and weekend training seminars. ‘What we have done is create a new plan called 2+4+1: involving two full days of health coaching, then four evenings to update them on clinical areas, and one day to integrate the two together,’ explained Mr Patel.

Health coaching skills are a key focus of the training.

‘The reason we spent two days in health coaching, was that we didn’t want them to just become aware of the subject, we wanted people to develop some mastery in this area. As a result, 96 per cent of the pharmacists said they were either confident or very confident and only four said they needed more help.’

Pharmacy teams in the North East London LPC area are enthusiastic about the project, said Mr Patel. ‘They have given up Sundays and evenings to do these training courses, and the buzz is there even when the training course finishes at 10 in the evening.’