Outsourced clinical pharmacist services
Outsourced clinical pharmacist services for GP practices and PCNs
Hand over a defined body of medicines work and get it back done, evidenced and reported. Virtual Pharmacist delivers a governed clinical pharmacy service inside your own clinical system, and we are accountable for the capacity, the continuity and the reporting.
You keep clinical responsibility for your patients and your protocols. We take on the workstreams you choose to commission, deliver them to the standard you agree, and record every action in your own record as it happens.
Get a scoping conversation Call 0113 871 5065
No obligation. A short conversation gets you a scoped figure and an honest answer on whether we are the right fit.
What you can hand over
You commission a defined workstream and we deliver it to an agreed standard on an agreed cycle. You choose which parts of the medicines workload leave your practice.
The workstreams practices and networks most often commission:
- Clinical medication reviews
- Repeat prescription management
- Acute prescription request reviews
- Medicines management queries
- Clinical letter reconciliation
- Discharge medication reconciliation
- High-risk drug monitoring
- Long-term condition clinics
- CQC searches and preparation
- Clinical audits
Most practices start with one or two, usually whichever is interrupting the working day most often.
How the service runs
The service is designed to be invisible to your patients and obvious in your workload.
In your own system
Carried out in EMIS, SystmOne, Vision or Medicus under your own role-based access controls. No second system to learn and no patient data to move.
Scope agreed up front
We agree in writing what is in scope, what is actioned directly, what returns to a GP, and on what cycle. That agreement is what the service is measured against.
Evidenced as it happens
Every action is recorded in your record at the time it is taken, so your audit trail is complete without anyone assembling it afterwards.
Reported on a fixed cycle
A small number of measures agreed up front, returned on a fixed cycle, mapped to something you are accountable for.
Want to know what this would cost for your practices?
A short scoping conversation gets you a clear figure built around your workstreams and list size. No obligation attached.
Continuity and capacity
This is what separates a commissioned service from a vacancy you have filled.
Continuity of the service is our responsibility. The workstream keeps moving because the capacity behind it is a clinical team, not a single individual. Absence and recruitment sit with us.
Capacity is sized to the work. Discharge volume and query volume move with local secondary care activity and with the season. A commissioned workstream is resized to match; a single post cannot be.
Consistency where it matters clinically. For patients whose complexity is medicines complexity, the same core clinical team delivers your service throughout, so reviews and monitoring follow a consistent thread across the year.
If you are weighing this against building your own team, we have set out the trade-off honestly in outsourced vs in-house clinical pharmacy.
Governance you can inspect before you commit
Commissioning clinical work to a third party works when you can see how it is governed. Ours is documented and available to read now.
- Clinical governance and data security
- DCB0129 clinical safety compliance
- How clinical competence is evidenced
- The pharmacists who do the work
Every pharmacist and pharmacy technician working on your records is registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council, and independent prescriber status is verified where the role calls for it.
Where this model fits
Being straight about this saves everyone a year.
It fits when you have a defined body of work that has to keep moving through the whole year. When you need capacity faster than recruitment can deliver it. When the work spans several practices and is cheaper scoped once than five times. When a backlog needs clearing and does not need a permanent post behind it afterwards.
It fits less well when what you want is a colleague physically present at the practice each week for corridor conversations and practice meetings. If that is the need, recruiting your own post is the better route, and we will tell you so.
Coverage and clinical systems
We work in EMIS, SystmOne, Vision and Medicus, so a network can standardise its medicines work without changing anyone’s software. Because delivery is remote, coverage does not depend on travel time, and practices in rural and hard-to-recruit areas get the same service as city centres.
What happens when you get in touch
Four steps, and you can stop at any of them.
A short conversation
Which workstreams are causing the most disruption, how many practices are involved, and what your clinical system is.
A scoped proposal
What we would take on, on what cycle, with what reporting, and what it costs.
Governance review
You read the clinical governance, data security and clinical safety documentation before anything is agreed.
Start with one workstream
Most practices begin with a single workstream and commission more once the pattern is working.
Compare us properly
Most providers describe a similar service in similar language. These guides are written to help you compare on the things that separate them, including where we are not the right answer.
Tell us what you want to hand over
Tell us what is landing on your GPs that does not need a GP. We will tell you what taking it on would involve, what it would cost, and whether we are the right fit.
