Pfizer launches UK pharmacy service
pharmafile | June 7, 2010 | News story | | NHS, NHS Constitution, NHS Health Check, Pfizer
Pfizer has launched a new pharmacy-based service that will enable Primary Care Trusts in England to provide the NHS Health Check progamme through community pharmacies.
Steve Poulton, commercial director and head of the Established Products Business Unit at Pfizer UK, said: “Vascular Health Checks have a clear benefit in identifying at-risk patients for appropriate intervention, but it is essential to engage the hard-to-reach patients, especially those who rarely, if ever, visit their doctor.
“Pfizer are ready to work with Primary Care Organisations to deliver these tests with a proven cost-effective service, and community-based locations such as pharmacy are the ideal places to hold these screening services.”
The Pfizer Vascular Health Check Service is a commercial support service that offers to supply PCTs with all the equipment, consumables, training, IT, service support and audit processes required to run vascular health checks.
This service is unrelated to Pfizer’s sales of medicines business and is a stand-alone commercial venture, and is intended to broaden Pfizer’s portfolio of healthcare offerings.
It will be augmented by a software package provided by Advanced Computer Software that aims to guide pharmacists and clinicians through the NHS Health Check procedure, calculate patient risk factors, suggest courses of action and relay information about the test securely back to the patient’s GP.
The NHS Health Check programme was launched by the Labour government in April last year as a “systematic, universal, and integrated check” that would be made available for all people between the ages of 40 and 74 and delivered through a variety of providers.
Dr Fran Sivers, chief executive of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society, said: “GPs alone do not have the capacity to undertake all the screening tests required each year by the government. Running vascular health checks in settings such as a community pharmacy, and then targeting referrals of at-risk patients to general practice, encourages a more co-ordinated and cost efficient approach to vascular disease prevention.”
Sivers added: “It ensures that GPs treat more of the high risk patients and members of the primary healthcare team manage the diet and lifestyle aspects of vascular prevention, to help even more people stay healthy for longer.”
The NHS Health Check programme will be enshrined in the NHS Constitution, allowing access to health checks every five years as a legal right.
Its primary aim is to detect vascular disease, currently the biggest cause of death in the UK, at an earlier stage.
The NHS Health Checks service will aim to prevent around 1,600 heart attacks and strokes and save at least 650 lives each year.
In association with the Health Service Journal, Pfizer will host a roundtable webcast on implementing Vascular Health Checks in community settings on 28 June.
Ben Adams
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