Community pharmacists will receive an alert when assessing “shielded patients,” the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has said.
NHS Digital has added a ‘vulnerability flag’ to the NHS Summary Care Record (SCR) of patients who are on the shielded patient list.
The PSNC on Thursday (April 7) said the flag “will support pharmacy teams’ decision making” on how to deal with people in the list – patients who are "immunosuppressed and at greatest risk" and advised to stay at home for 12 weeks.
It added that “although the flag will initially only be visible within the NHS Spine SCRa application, it is hoped that clinical and PMR system suppliers that enable pharmacy teams to benefit from the SCR 1-click feature will also be able to display this information in the future.”
The new feature, which is being piloted in community pharmacies since April 3, will be rolled out to other parts of the health and care system in due course.
