Patient Experiences of Pharmacy Services

Overall, we recorded a total of 141 experiences about Pharmacy Services across Devon, Plymouth and Torbay during the 18-month period. 109 experiences shared with us (77%) were negative in sentiment and of those 82 experiences (75%) recorded related to pharmacy services in Plymouth.

The most common themes (89% of all experiences) discussed by people are:

• Medication – 53 experiences (38%)
• Staff – 37 experiences (26%)
• Administration – 18 experiences (13%)
• Access to services – 17 experiences (12%)

Feedback continues to focus on medication delays and supply problems that affect the prescription/repeat prescription service, leading to longer time periods from requesting the medication to being able to pick it up. Other areas for concern include patients not knowing when their medications are ready for collection, phone calls going unanswered when patients attempt to enquire as to the status of the prescription within the system and temporary short notice closures due to staffing levels, all of which continue to leave patients feeling frustrated.

Our Recommendations

1. That NHS stakeholders in Devon respond to the experiences presented in this report and our findings and that their responses provide details as to how the issues raised in this report will be addressed.

2. Where pharmacies do not have capacity to answer telephone calls, they could consider introducing either an answerphone or a message facility so that patients can have their queries responded to as soon as possible. Not all patients use mobile phone apps (or are confident in using them) so being able to contact a service by telephone and to receive a response is important to patients in enabling them to be kept up to date as to when their prescription will be ready to collect, particularly if they do not automatically receive a text message when their prescription is ready for collection.

3. That NHS Devon considers the experiences and concerns raised in this report and provides HWDPT with a response as to how the issues highlighted by patients in relation to current systems of service delivery will help to inform future strategy development.

4. That in line with Healthwatch England’s recommendations, NHS Devon and NHS England Southwest plans how to develop capacity of the existing pharmacy workforce within the more comprehensive primary care teams across the NHS as set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan and that Healthcare Leaders locally and nationally should urgently consider how to tackle medicine shortages for the longer term.

5. That University Hospital Plymouth NHS Trust considers working with Healthwatch Plymouth in monitoring patient experience feedback once proposed changes to the Outpatient Pharmacy service are fully implemented.

“In response to the recommendations, NHS Devon will use the outputs of this report to directly inform the development of its Pharmacy strategy, which is currently in development (2023/24) enabling us to show how the experiences of patients in Devon have been used to develop and improve services for pharmacy services and patients.” "Community Pharmacy Devon will review all recommendations made by the report and ensure that they are considered in full as part of processes for developing and improving pharmacy services, with the providers and the commissioners in Devon.”