A useful change has to earn its place in the pharmacy day.
The phone rings. A prescription needs clarifying. A service needs following up. The owner is thinking about the business while the team is thinking about the next person.
Our community-pharmacy direction begins with that reality. We are developing medicines intelligence around a specific question: what would help the team complete important work with less avoidable friction?
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Start where the work actually happens.
A pharmacy is a healthcare setting and a working business. Dispensing, clinical services, medicines queries and administration draw on the same people and attention. A promising new approach needs to understand how those activities interact before asking the team to change.
NHSBSA recorded 1.30 billion prescription items dispensed in the community in England in 2025/26. That national scale gives context; a useful local proposition still begins with one pharmacy’s workflow, staffing and service model. We want the first question to be recognisable to the people doing the work.
Give the owner and the professional team a useful reason.
For an independent owner, the question is what a change would contribute to a sustainable business: the effort to introduce it, the recurring support it needs and the work it helps the team complete. For the responsible pharmacist and pharmacy team, the question is whether it supports dependable practice and a manageable day.
GPhC standards make pharmacy owners accountable for meeting the standards for registered pharmacies in Great Britain. A proposed evaluation therefore needs the appropriate owner or director, professional leadership and team input. These roles help define the right scope and who can authorise it.
The handover is complete when the important work is resolved.
A referral or a discharge-related medicines query can pass through several people before it is closed. The practical questions are simple to recognise: did it arrive, who is dealing with it, what information is missing and what happens if an answer does not come back?
A focused evaluation could trace that journey through the existing process. It would examine repeated queries, waiting, checking and the work needed to resolve an issue. The aim is to understand where better organisation and evidence could help the pharmacy and the services it works with.
Make the work around a service visible.
A clinical service has an operating model as well as a clinical specification. Referral flows, capacity, preparation, training, follow-up and payment administration all affect what a pharmacy can sustain. When a step is unclear, the team often supplies the missing coordination.
Our development interest is in that surrounding work: what needs to happen, who owns it and what would count as useful follow-through. PHARMORIS is the flagship programme through which we are examining the broader connection between evidence, accountable action and review.
Make room for the work that matters.
The owner. The pharmacist. The team. A clearer view of the work between them.
Film creditsConnect the pharmacy with the medicines work around it.
A community pharmacy and a general practice see different parts of a person’s medicines journey. Information and responsibilities need to be clear when the work crosses an organisational boundary. The useful question is often about coordination: what is being requested, which team should respond and how an unresolved issue returns to attention.
NHS England’s structured medication review guidance emphasises personalised review and shared decision-making. A development proposition around organisational follow-through should support the appropriate professional roles and fit the local service arrangements. The evaluation question is about the workflow, not a new promise of automated clinical advice.
DMS Commissioner Value Scan.
Hospital discharge is a handover between services. England’s NHS Discharge Medicines Service connects the hospital referral with medicines support in community pharmacy.
A proposed review of where discharge medicines pathways lose momentum: expected referrals, observed activity, action and completion. The aim is to help commissioners and pharmacy teams identify which gaps justify intervention, which need better information and what a useful next step would be.
The proposed scan would use appropriate aggregate, non-identifiable information to examine the pathway. A useful result would distinguish a gap the team can act on from a gap that first needs better information.
A business case that counts the whole effort.
Releasing staff capacity can make more useful work possible. It does not automatically reduce payroll expenditure. Additional service activity can create income and bring extra delivery cost. An owner needs these effects shown clearly to decide whether a change is worth adopting.
We would examine the complete task: preparation, checking, rework, onboarding, training and ongoing support. The comparison should explain who receives the value and which assumptions matter. A small, repeatable improvement with a clear basis can be more useful to an independent than a large headline detached from the working day.
Choose one question the pharmacy can test properly.
A strong first proposition identifies a recurring task, a professional owner and the existing way of working. It also identifies what the pharmacy can realistically contribute to an evaluation and which result would justify a further step.
Possible questions include the quality and effort of review preparation, a clearer handover process or follow-through around a service. The scope is agreed around the actual setting. Independent pharmacies and small groups can help shape a focused proposition without being asked to redesign their entire operation.
These are development and evaluation directions. Each proposed engagement needs a defined purpose, appropriate permissions and a comparison that includes the work carried by the team.
What keeps coming back onto your team’s desk?
Tell us about one recurring medicines workflow, who owns it and what would make it work better. Please keep the first enquiry free of patient information.