A clinical pharmacist service should give your practice regular reports on the work delivered, the clinical outcomes, and the actions waiting for your GPs, backed by coding in your own clinical record. For a PCN, the same reports should be available for each practice and for the network. This article lists what to ask for and how to use it.
Why does reporting matter when you commission a service?
Reporting shows the practice what it received for its money and where the clinical value sits. It also gives the partners, the PCN board and the ICB a clear record of the work. With a managed service, the workload is agreed in advance, so the report can compare what was delivered with what was commissioned.
What should an activity report include?
An activity report should show the volume of each workstream delivered in the period. Typical lines:
- Structured medication reviews completed
- High-risk drug monitoring patients reviewed
- Discharge and clinic letters reconciled
- Prescription requests and medicines queries handled
- Prescriptions signed where the pharmacist is an independent prescriber
- Safety alert searches run and patients worked
Ask for the figures by workstream and by practice. Totals on their own hide where the work went. Ask for the previous period alongside, so trends are easy to read. Where the service handles prescription requests or queries, ask for turnaround as well as volume, so the practice can see how quickly work moves.
What outcomes should the report show?
The report should show what changed for patients: medicines stopped, started or changed, monitoring brought up to date and patients referred back to a GP. Outcome lines tell the partners more than activity counts do, because they show the clinical effect of each review. Ask for outcomes in plain categories the partners recognise, such as stopped, reduced, switched, started and referred. Consistent categories make one period easy to compare with the next.
Where a scheme attaches a value to an outcome, the report can show that too. One Derbyshire practice used an ICB scheme paying £80 for each clinically appropriate anticoagulant switch. Of 65 patients screened, 37 were switched and the practice claimed £2,960 in gross incentive income, before service fees and other costs.
How should GP actions be reported?
GP actions should be reported as a clear list of items waiting for a GP decision, with the patient, the question and the date raised. This is the part of the report that the practice uses day to day. The escalation route to your GPs is agreed at the start, and the report shows what is open and what has been closed.
A good GP action list is short, specific and dated. Each item says what decision is needed, so a GP can deal with it at a glance. Keeping recently closed items visible for a while lets the practice see that each loop has closed.
What should a PCN expect that a single practice does not?
A PCN should expect reporting for each practice and for the network, in one format. The clinical director needs to see what each practice received. The network needs one picture for its board and its ICB. The per-practice view also shows how the work is shared: each member practice can see what it received against its part of the plan, which helps the clinical director explain decisions to the PCN board. Ask a provider for an example report in both forms before you commission. Network reports also help in conversations with the ICB, which our article on PCN and ICB medicines objectives covers.
Our PCN pharmacist services are delivered to one standard across member practices, with reporting set out per practice and for the network.
How does the clinical record support the reports?
The clinical record is the primary evidence behind every report. Our team codes every action in the practice’s own record as it goes, so any figure in a report can be traced back to patients in your system. That also gives the practice an audit trail it can show to an inspector or commissioner. It keeps the report and the record in step: when a partner wants to check a figure, the practice can run a search in its own system and see the same patients. For QOF work, the same coding feeds the practice’s own indicator counts.
How often should you receive reports?
Agree the frequency with the provider at the start, and match it to how the practice uses the information. Many practices want a regular summary for the partners and a running list of GP actions. PCNs often add a network summary for their board meetings. Settle who reads each report, so it reaches the person who acts on it.
Keep the format stable once it works. A consistent layout makes trends easy to follow, and a new line can be added to the existing report when the practice needs one.
What we see in practice
Reporting matters most when the work is counted. A practice of around 6,000 patients handed over its medicines-related QOF work in August, and one governed pathway supported around 26 indicators, with registers worked across the year. A Norfolk and Waveney PCN received 1,000 structured medication reviews between October 2025 and March 2026. In both cases, the report let the practice or network see the work against the plan.
Read the clinical pharmacy case studies for the full examples.
Want to see how we report? Send us an enquiry and we will reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
Can reports be split by practice within a PCN?
Yes. We report per practice and for the network, in one format.
Where is the clinical evidence held?
In your own clinical system. Every action is coded in the patient record as it happens.
Can reporting follow QOF or local scheme indicators?
Yes. Agree the indicators at the start, and the report can track the registers and outcomes that matter to the practice.
Who should receive the reports?
The person who acts on them. Usually that is a partner or practice manager for a practice, and the clinical director or PCN manager for a network.
Should reports include safety alert work?
Yes. Reporting the searches run, the patients identified and the actions taken gives the practice evidence of its medicines safety work for its governance file.
