Community Pharmacy Standard
Community pharmacies are offering an increased range of services to support and care for people in the community. It is essential that they are able to record and share vital information about a person’s care with GP practices and other services.
By doing this digitally using standards, we can ensure that care professionals and citizens have timely access to relevant information, leading to better, safer and more personalised care in the community.
Current release
From 01 January 2026, this standard will be owned and managed by NHS England and is made available for reuse or amendment under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL 3.0). A review of the ongoing requirement for this standard will be undertaken by NHS England. Details on this and any update to the standard will be published on the NHS Standards Directory. If you have any questions or feedback relating to this standard, please email: england.standards.assurance@nhs.net.
About this standard
The standard defines the information that should be recorded in the community pharmacy and sent to the person’s GP and for all the services covered by the English Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework.
The benefits:
- Improved communication methods support community pharmacy to take on a greater range of clinical services to reduce burden on other parts of the health and care system and ensures that the clinical contribution of community pharmacists is visible to the wider NHS.
- Timely sharing of clinically relevant data in relation to pharmacy services undertaken to other NHS providers
- Transfer of standardised coded data sets to patients’ primary care health record.
- A more comprehensive patient health record with the inclusion of clinically relevant outcomes from pharmacy services, which has the potential to improve medication safety and support medicines optimisation.
- Reduced risk of errors and administrative burden due to elimination of paper templates and transfer of information through non-direct routes into patients’ primary care health record.
Examples
To give a clearer idea of how the standard works in practice, PRSB have created some scenario examples.
Endorsement
- Association of Independent Multiples Pharmacies
- The Company Chemists’ Association
- Faculty of Public Health
- National Pharmacy Association
- Community Pharmacy England (formerly the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee)
- Royal College of General Practitioners
- Royal Pharmaceutical Society
- United Kingdom Clinical Pharmacy Association