Blood pressure at requests of Surgery receptionists

[Primrose]

Why do receptionists think they can order the pharmacist to conduct a blood pressure check on their patient and request it to be reported back to them?

First of all there is a risk of litigation and a risk of incorrect transcription inti the patients surgery PMR at the surgery.

why is the practice not providing a full service for their BP med patients?

Why is the work offloaded for no fee to Pharmacies.

why do they presume a pharmacist will agree to do the test. The test in the community pharmacy is at the pharmacist's discretion.

why do patients keep coming twice a week for a BP check when you only need one occasionally if stable.

It literally getting out of hand the cheek of it.

[Pharmanaut]

How pharmacists can help with the GP workload?

[johnep]

Do Drs get a fee for recording a blood pressure?
johnep

[Pharmanaut]

Do Drs get a fee for recording a blood pressure?
johnep

Not sure,
I know they get a fee for someone to help to claim fees.

[johnep]

Another step on the way to showing how essential a Practice Pharmacist could be. If Drs are claiming a fee, then the pharmacy is assisting fraud.
johnep

[hazeleyes]

We have a commissioned service in our pharmacy for bp, I know of others who charge a fiver for it.

[mcitr]

It's actually really complicated. So the GPs do actually get paid to this day to do blood pressure checks. But it's as part as the NHS Health Care checks that have run for the last few years.

A NHS Health check is for those aged 40-74 and does waist measurement, BMI, a blood pressure check and cholesterol check. It's been estimated that it's £200 per appointment, so is very controversial.

It isn't as simple as that though because it's actually been devolved to local authorities since 2012 to cough up the cash and what with austerity there's definitely at least one around here that's axed it.

There are commissioned services where if the person knows how to use pharmaoutcomes and can be bothered, you'll get paid a tiny amount of dosh for doing it. It's usually contracted out to the healthcare assistants to do.

The twice a week thing is but the tip of the iceberg, seen quite a few patients bring in old blood pressure monitors and demand they be 'looked at'. Some get quite shirty when you tell them it's a medical device and it's got to be dealt with by the manufacturer. Just one of the more amusing parts of community pharmacy where everyone wants you to sort out all of their problems for them, however bizarre and for free.

One multiple sells blood pressure monitors on private prescriptions ).

There are a lot of free blood pressure checks done because the patients cannot be arsed to go to the GPs or want to do everything possible to avoid visiting and will ask you send the results to the GP (which is very dodgy in itself from a GDPR perspective).

[admin]

GP surgeries getting paid to do BP tests would come under the QOF payments (see below). We have to do annual BP and bloods (HbA1c BCP and lipids) for hypertensive patients to get the payment as far as I understand (I don’t claim the money of course). If patients just get a BP measurement when they come to the surgery (for whatever reason) there’s no payment for that. In fact I often do BP for patients if they ask me to.

The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) is a voluntary annual reward and incentive programme for all GP surgeries in England, detailing practice achievement results. It is not about performance management but resourcing and then rewarding good practice.

[mcitr]

On the plus side I will say that pharmacies in more affluent areas, if you use the right techniques a sale of a blood pressure monitor is a walk in the park. One of the few items that one can sell that you can make more than 50 pence on!

[lol2806]

Our local hospital trust started asking patients to bring a BP reading from doctors surgeries or local pharmacies to their pre-op appointments - the local surgeries refused to do it, saying it was the hospitals work. I had a pre-op assessment for my operation last week and they refused to look at the readings my colleague had taken, as they couldn’t depend on the training of the colleague taking the blood pressure or the calibration of the machine being used so took it with their own machine.

[johnep]

I regret a common perception. Pharmacists are not to be trusted!
johnep

[BrianA]

GPs get paid for recording data re completed health checks or QOF. BP is a major marker for health of a patient. It is common practice for HCAs, Nurses and Doctors to take BPs as part of routine consultations and chronic disease management clinics. If you are in a pharmacy and do not want to provide BPs, don't! Only provide services that you are remunerated for or benefits the pharmacy in some other way, otherwise concentrate on pharmaceutical services that are part of your NHS terms of service, nationally or locally.

[johnep]

Yep, Joke was that if a Dr asked to do anything, he reaches for his wallet.
johnep