NHS Supporting Early Diagnosis of Cancer (Community Pharmacy) Pilot

Background

Early diagnosis is key to improving patient outcomes for cancer. The NHS Long Term Plan set out an ambition that, by 2028, 75% of cancer patients should have their cancer diagnosed at stages 1 and 2. 

As one of the most accessible forms of healthcare, community pharmacies can play a crucial role in facilitating early cancer diagnosis. Furthermore, as the accessibility of community pharmacies is greatest in areas of higher deprivation, they may have an important role to play in reducing inequalities in cancer diagnosis.

Some community pharmacy staff are already encouraging people to seek help from their GP if they are experiencing symptoms that could be a sign of cancer. Providing community pharmacy staff with the option to refer people to secondary care or their GP directly could help the NHS find more cancers earlier and help reduce health inequalities.

Action

The NHS Midlands and Lancashire (NHS ML) Medicines Management and Optimisation (MMO) team led a collaborative programme involving NHS England and four Cancer Alliances (Peninsula, Southeast London, Greater Manchester & East of England North) as well as local stakeholders like Local Pharmaceutical Committees (LPCs).

NHS ML provided operational support to the Cancer Alliances to support the launch of the pilot in their locality, developing of digital infrastructure to capture patient consultations from pharmacies and to support the reimbursement of activity, supporting Alliances and LPCs in providing training and contributing to the development of local clinical protocols to assist pharmacists with their decision-making, ensuring patients could be referred onwards to the appropriate pathway

Impact

• NHS ML facilitated the registration of over 60 participating community pharmacies across the four NHS Cancer Alliances by providing training and supporting stakeholders through webinars and recorded videos
• NHS ML produced an MS Form for each NHS Cancer Alliance that was bespoke and tailored for the individual clinical protocols in that region. This enabled the capture of vital data like tumour sites and cancer red flag symptoms for onward investigation to the appropriate setting.
• A total of 142 consultations were submitted by  community pharmacies across the four alliances during the duration of the NHSE-commissioned national pilot. NHS ML played a pivotal role in quality checking these consultations to ensure that patients were referred to the most appropriate pathway, and provided feedback and training support to pharmacies in collaboration with local stakeholders
• NHS ML supported NHS England with the ongoing evaluation of the pilot by collating minimum data set reports for the quantitative evaluation of the pilot (pending). We collaborated with The Strategy Unit to share patient information and participation sheets, following consent to enable patient interviews to be conducted as part of the qualitative evaluation.