Most GP practices feel the same pull in two directions. On one side is the access target and the daily pressure to offer appointments to patients who need same-day or urgent attention. On the other is the proactive, planned work that keeps people with long-term conditions stable and out of hospital. Both matter, and both compete for the same finite GP hours.
When access becomes the priority, the planned medicines work tends to slip. Long-term condition reviews get pushed back, polypharmacy goes unchecked, and high-risk drug monitoring drifts past its due date. The reverse is also true: protect the review work and the urgent demand spills over, waiting times grow, and patients struggle to get through. The usual answer is to ask GPs to do more in the same day, which is neither sustainable nor safe.
There is a more practical route. Meeting the GP access target is rarely about squeezing more appointments out of the same clinicians. It is about taking work that does not need a GP off the GP, so the appointments they do hold can go to the patients who genuinely need a doctor. A large share of that movable work sits in medicines.
Why the access target and medicines work collide
The clinical workload around medicines is steady, recurring and largely predictable. Patients on multiple long-term conditions need structured reviews. People on high-risk drugs need regular monitoring, with bloods checked against safe ranges. Frail and elderly patients need polypharmacy looked at to remove what is no longer helping. Repeat medication queries arrive every day, and many of them land on a GP simply because there is no one else set up to deal with them.
Individually, none of these tasks is dramatic. Together, they consume a meaningful slice of the clinical week. Every medication query a GP answers, every review they squeeze in between appointments, every monitoring result they chase is time not spent on the access demand that the target measures. The two jobs pull from the same pool, so progress on one usually comes at the cost of the other.
This is where skill mix matters. Much of the medicines work is exactly the kind of activity a clinical pharmacist is trained and registered to lead. Redesigning who does what, rather than asking everyone to do more, is the lever that frees GP time without cutting corners on care.
Moving the medicines workload to the right professional
A clinical pharmacist working inside the practice can own the medicines workload end to end. They are well placed to lead structured medication reviews, manage repeat prescribing safely, run high-risk drug monitoring and handle the daily flow of medicine queries that would otherwise interrupt a GP. Pharmacy technicians can take on the supporting tasks that keep the system moving, from reconciliation to query triage and prescribing administration.
From September 2026, newly qualified pharmacists in Great Britain qualify as independent prescribers, which broadens what the profession can safely carry within general practice over time. That direction of travel makes medicines a natural area to redesign around now rather than later.
The point of moving this work is not simply to offload tasks. It is to put each piece of clinical activity with the professional best suited to it, so GPs are freed to concentrate on the diagnosis, complex decision-making and acute presentations that only a doctor can manage. Done well, the planned medicines work keeps running on schedule while the GP diary opens up for access demand.
Our clinical pharmacist support and pharmacy technician support are designed around this skill-mix redesign, taking the recurring medicines work off the GP so practice capacity can be pointed where the access target needs it.
A managed service, not another rota to run
There is an important difference between hiring people to fill a gap and handing over the work itself. Recruiting and managing pharmacists adds its own pressure: induction, supervision, holiday and sickness cover, governance, and the risk that the work stalls when an individual moves on. If the aim is to protect GP time, a model that creates fresh management demands works against you.
Virtual Pharmacist provides a fully managed, remote clinical pharmacy service. We deliver the medicines work inside your own clinical system, EMIS or SystmOne, so it is done in the practice’s records rather than alongside them. We hold the clinical governance, quality assurance and accountability for the service we deliver, and continuity of that service is our responsibility rather than a rota you have to keep filled. The result is that the medicines workload simply gets done, reliably, while your team focuses on access.
That managed approach is the difference between adding capacity you then have to oversee and removing the workload altogether. You are not taking on staff to direct day to day. You are commissioning a service with defined outputs, run by a national team of GPhC-registered pharmacists and technicians, and supported by a full information governance stack including NHS DSPT, Cyber Essentials, HSCN connectivity, ICO registration and data sharing agreements. You can read more about how we handle clinical governance and data security.
What this frees your GPs to do
When the medicines work moves to a managed service, GP time is released back to the activity that the access target depends on. In practice that means:
- More GP appointments available for same-day and urgent demand, because clinicians are not absorbing routine medication queries.
- Long-term condition and structured medication reviews kept on schedule rather than deferred whenever access pressure rises.
- High-risk drug monitoring carried out consistently and on time, reducing the safety risk that builds up when reviews are delayed.
- Polypharmacy and frailty reviews done proactively, which can reduce avoidable appointments and prescribing problems further down the line.
- A clearer division of labour, so GPs spend their time on diagnosis and complex care instead of work that sits well with the wider team.
Crucially, this happens without trading proactive care for access. The planned work continues because someone is dedicated to it, and the urgent work has more room because the GP diary is no longer carrying medicines tasks it does not need to hold.
How this fits the wider NHS picture
Skill-mix redesign in general practice is consistent with the direction of national policy and the way the GP contract and Network Contract DES encourage practices and PCNs to make better use of the multidisciplinary team. QOF continues to reward well-managed long-term condition care, and PCN-level incentives reward sensible use of the wider workforce. We would always point you to the current BMA and NHS England documentation for the live detail, as the specifics change, but the underlying message is steady: get the right professional doing the right work.
Clinical pharmacy work in general practice sits within your own CQC registration and clinical governance, and the pharmacists involved are regulated by the GPhC. A managed service should strengthen that governance position rather than complicate it, which is why we take responsibility for quality assurance and accountability for the work we deliver. For PCNs looking to use existing funding routes well, our ARRS support turns that investment into delivered clinical value rather than another vacancy to fill.
Whether you are a single practice trying to protect appointment availability, a PCN reshaping how medicines work is delivered, or an ICB looking at this across a footprint, the principle holds. Removing clinical workload through a governed service is one of the more direct ways to make headway on access while keeping long-term condition care intact. You can see how this works in practice through our medicines optimisation support.
Frequently asked questions
How does taking medicines work off GPs help us meet the access target?
The access target depends on GP appointment availability. A large amount of routine medicines work, such as medication reviews, repeat queries and monitoring, currently sits with GPs but does not need a doctor. Moving that work to a clinical pharmacy service frees GP appointments for the same-day and urgent demand the target measures, while the planned care still gets done.
Will the proactive long-term condition work still get done if GPs step back from it?
Yes. The aim is to dedicate the right professional to that work rather than fit it around urgent demand. A clinical pharmacist can lead structured medication reviews, polypharmacy and frailty reviews and high-risk drug monitoring, so the planned work runs on schedule instead of slipping whenever access pressure rises.
Is this the same as hiring our own pharmacist?
No. Virtual Pharmacist provides a managed clinical pharmacy service, not staff to direct day to day. We hold the clinical governance, quality assurance and accountability, and we take responsibility for continuity of the service. You commission a service with defined outputs rather than taking on a role you then have to recruit for, supervise and keep covered.
How do you work inside our practice without being on site?
We deliver remotely inside your own clinical system, EMIS or SystmOne, so the work is recorded in your patient records as if done in house. Our information governance stack, including NHS DSPT, Cyber Essentials, HSCN connectivity, ICO registration and data sharing agreements, supports secure remote working within your governance framework.
Does this affect our CQC position?
Clinical pharmacy work in general practice sits within your own CQC registration and clinical governance, and the pharmacists are regulated by the GPhC. A managed service is designed to support that position, because we hold quality assurance and accountability for the work we deliver and document it within your records.
If your practice, PCN or ICB is trying to meet the GP access target without letting long-term condition care slip, we would be glad to talk through how a managed clinical pharmacy service could remove the medicines workload from your GPs. Contact Virtual Pharmacist to discuss what would work for you.
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