thePharmacyClinic

The Pharmacy Clinic is a joint venture between Pharmacists and Physicians to provide essential clinical services to NHS and private patients during the current times of limited access to healthcare. These will include access to blood tests, blood pressure measurement, electrocardiograms (ECG), skin rash or lesion assessment, medication safety monitoring, as well as access to a skilled clinician as necessary.

The initial aim is to open our doors to pharmacy phlebotomy, the ability of NHS patients to have their blood tests locally rather than travel and wait for an appointment in the local hospital.

At present the waiting times to have a blood test at the local hospital or GP practice has increased significantly due social distancing rules, the new requirement to make an appointment, and other constraints.

Using the capacity for phlebotomy at Greenlight Pharmacies, and other pharmacies working in partnership, we estimate that in North Central London alone we can increase the capacity for daily blood tests by 200 patients per day. This will have a significant impact on the safety and well-being of our patients who currently cannot get essential blood tests taken due to Covid restrictions.

This innovation is brought about by new technology which enables the PharmaClinic to search for and identify blood tests requested locally in a secure manner, and to print the forms and barcoded labels needed for the blood tubes and laboratory processing. The system is simple and safe, and it will send results directly to the requesting clinicians.

We believe this can be done in a simpler way.