CLEO EPS is Helping Community Pharmacy Face New Challenges
We sit down with Paul Perry and Karen Ventura to talk about the exciting developments going on in Community Pharmacy at the moment with the extension of Independent Prescribing and how CLEO EPS Community Pharmacy is helping.
Community pharmacy is changing – why did CLEO Systems develop CLEO EPS Community Pharmacy and what challenges is it solving for Independent Prescribing Pharmacists?
Karen: "Community pharmacy is going through fairly major transformational change in England at the moment, with independent prescribing becoming a core part of professional and clinical care. Pharmacists are going to be taking on a much greater clinical responsibility than before, and they need tools that are going to support them to do this.
"We developed CLEO EPS Community Pharmacy as we recognised that pharmacist prescribers needed a solution that is tailor made for them and for what they will be doing, rather than adapting systems that are built for other care settings and trying to make them work.
"The challenges we are trying to solve is to make prescribing more simple for pharmacist prescribers, supporting safer prescribing and making everything more connected. In the past you’d write the paper FP10 - some of these would be illegible and not usable, some would get lost, which was not great for patient. We digitise that process and add in some decision support around prompting for particular contraindications and - importantly – we send the prescription quickly and securely to the Spine and allow the patient to pick up in the pharmacy of their choice.
"We’ve heard horror stories of patients having to take 5 buses to get a prescription, which really shouldn’t need to happen!
"The timing is important here, as lots more Independent Prescribers are going to be trained and ready this year across community pharmacy, so it’s great to have the technology available to help them deliver safer care."
The solution has already been used successfully through the NHS England Community Pharmacy Pathfinder programme … What feedback have you received from pharmacists using the system?
Paul: "We’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the Pathfinder Programme, particularly around delivering pharmacy services within a workflow that feels familiar, safe and clinically robust. We’ve also heard often that the solution meets the needs of patients as well - pharmacists have specifically told us that having access to a purpose built electronic prescribing solution helps reduce the administrative burden, helps support accurate documentation and gives time for really focussed patient care.
"With my GP hat on, from a clinical perspective you really value the safety features which are in the system, the structured prescribing workflow, the clear audit flows and the integration with national services. All these capabilities support safe decision making for clinicians on the shop floor.
"Ultimately the feedback reinforces our overarching goal, which is to provide the technology and power to independent prescribers in order to provide accessible, high quality care within community pharmacy."
Independent Prescribing is widely seen as a key part of the future of community pharmacy. How does CLEO EPS Community Pharmacy help pharmacists to deliver safe efficient and clinically robust services within communities?
Karen: "This is about replacing the paper based processes and removing the administrative burden, but also making sure that the system doesn’t introduce a cognitive burden. As pharmacists may start operating within clinics, this frees up pharmacists’ time – which will be critical for them when they have appointments with patients coming in. CLEO EPS CP helps pharmacists work at the top of their licenses and that what clinicians ultimately want: to know they have a safe system.
"Aside from our feedback on the community pharmacy side of things, we have regular feedback from other customers that the onboarding is really easy – taking only up to an hour to train on the system. This is the type of system people want to work with.
"We also work very closely with our user base, so we have an active user group, where we take on feedback - so that the solution is codesigned with our users. We do releases about three times a year with updated functionality and most of that is based on feedback from our very valued users and how they want to introduce new features."
Q: When it comes to feedback is there a common thread from customers?
We get a lot of feedback about the improvement it has made to pharmacists, from being able to safely and easily prescribe in the pharmacy. We’ve also had feedback from patients who have said the solution really helps them and saves them time while enhancing their experience. We often hear about how effective and easy the training is.
As the NHS continues into neighbourhood and preventative care - what role do you see community pharmacists playing in the future and how can technology such as CLEO EPS help unlock the full potential?
Community pharmacists are increasingly one of the most successful clinical professionals in the NHS. We believe they play a pivotal role in neighbourhood healthcare, looking at the NHS England plan that is setting out policy and direction of travel for how patients access care.
Going forward as pharmacists develop independent prescribing capabilities, they will be able to manage a broader range of conditions and will support long term condition management and deliver those preventative interventions that help relieve pressure on GP practices and other urgent care services.
I think for pharmacists to realise that potential, they need digital tools to provide the infrastructure to enable safe prescribing, seamless records keeping and efficiency around integrating into the wider healthcare systems and how pathways interreact with each other in that community setting.
Tell us about how the system is being taken up – is it popular?
Yes! We have had such great feedback on the technology and the system. For us at CLEO Systems, we don’t see technology as a replacement for clinical expertise, but as a means of amplifying it and a tool to use within those settings. By combining pharmacy expertise with safe digital prescribing tools, we can help unlock the full potential of those community services and support he wider NHS Long Term Plan around the integrated healthcare model.
