Pharmacy Contraceptive Service Toolkit for GP & Sexual Health Services

In May 2023, NHS England announced The Delivery Plan for recovering access in primary care. This highlighted the ambition to expand the Pharmacy Contraception Service (PCS), which previously allowed pharmacists to provide ongoing supplies of Oral Contraceptives (OC), to increase access to and convenience of contraception services in line with the Government’s Women's Health Strategy for England which had been announced in August 2022, and reduce the workload of Primary Care services.

The Pharmacy Contraception Service allows community pharmacists to:

• Initiate new supplies of oral contraception (OC)
• Continue ongoing supplies while completing the specific monitoring required.

The pharmacists will be suppling the oral contraception using Patient Group Directions (PGDs). 

 

Types of contraception

Type of contraception	Eligibility Criteria
Combined Oral Contraceptive (COC)	Women, from first period up to and including 49 years of age.
Progestogen only pill (POP)	Women, from first period up to and including 54 years of age.

• Reducing the number of requests for OC, and allowing patients with more complex needs to be seen by appropriate practitioners
• Allows clinical staff to see more complicated patients who are better suited to their specialty.
• Reduction in number of prescriptions to be processed for OC, allowing more time to process prescription requests for other medication.

Patients can access the service in the following ways: 

Flow chart showing: patients sent by GP Practice, Sexual Health Services, other NHS Providers such as 111, identified by pharmacy staff and patient requests service to be sent to Community Pharmacies providing Pharmacy Contraception Service.

For the Pharmacy Contraception Service, a digital referral is not required, patients can be signposted.  We recommend checking with your local pharmacy their preferences. 

It may be helpful to provide your reception team some training on the Pharmacy Contraception Service, such as how it works, the inclusion criteria and process.  The briefing for GP practice and sexual health clinic teams is a helpful tool to support this. 

• Template text messages are available, which can be customised and sent out to eligible patients over AccuRx to encourage them to approach community pharmacies for OC.
• Service posters are available to be printed out and displayed in the waiting area to promote the service to patients.
• Social media tiles are available for promoting the service over social media, and on the website.
• Share the link for patients to find a pharmacy that offers the contraceptive pill without a prescription, this can be customised into the text message mentioned above.

Community pharmacies nearby to your location may reach out to discuss the provision of this service. And if they have not yet reached out, we would recommend contacting your local community pharmacy team to arrange a discussion surrounding:

• What is the daily capacity of the community pharmacy for the Pharmacy Contraception Service?
• Does the community pharmacy have a preferred method for patients to be referred or signposted?
• How does the community pharmacy refer unsuitable patients back to the practice? Is there a channel for providing feedback?

Q. If an individual has had a gap in their OC cycle, can we still refer/signpost them to this service?
A: Yes. As the service now includes initiation of OC, people who have had a gap (of any duration in length) in their OC cycle, can be re-initiated on their original contraceptive as part of this service.

Q. Are individuals who may not be registered with a general practice eligible for this service?
A: Yes. Where an individual is identified as suitable for the service, but is not registered with a general practice, the service can still be provided. The individual should be provided with the results of any biometrics measurements undertaken and with information on how to register with a local practice.

Q. Can the pharmacies supply an oral contraceptive if the individual is not using it for contraceptive purposes, e.g. if they are taking it to regulate their periods, or for acne?
A: No. The service is a contraception service and the inclusion criteria for the service do not include other uses such as the management of bleeding, management of acne etc. The PGDs can only be used to provide supplies to individuals wishing to obtain an oral contraceptive for contraception purposes. Individuals seeking oral contraceptives for other conditions, should not be referred to community pharmacies to access this service.