Pharmacies continue to provide millions of unpaid consultations a year

Pharmacies - It is "astonishing" that England Pharmacy services carried out an estimated 65 million consultations in a year. Without dedicated funding, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has said.

Some 4,139 took part PSNC’s 2022 Pharmacy Advice Audit, which ran between January 31 and March 11 this year. The negotiating body announced this yesterday (June 26).

These reported completing 82,872 informal patient consultations during the audit period. Leading PSNC to estimate that “the average pharmacy carries out around 19 consultations per day”.

“This suggests that more than 1.2 million informal consultations are taking place in community pharmacy services in England every week,” PSNC wrote. Amounting to about 65 million consultations across 10,800 pharmacy services (excluding distance-selling) within a year.

Though it ran similar audits in 2020 and 2021, the negotiator said this year’s findings clearly “demonstrate that patients and the public are now more reliant than ever before on these services for healthcare advice”.