Hello & welcome to the 3rd in our series of monthly newsletters. We will continue will bring you industry summaries and insights using NHS data to keep you appraised on changes that affect you from a business point of view. This month our focus will be on Flu Jabs where information has just been released by the NHS for the 17/18 season.
Industry overview
Items
In the NHS data to January just released, Items for the month were up 0.4% on the month of February compared to the previous year.
Flu Season 17/18
English Pharmacies did an average of 115 Flu Jabs in 2017/18 compared to 81 for 2016/17, an increase of 41%. That’s a total of 1.35m patients that received a flu jab from a pharmacy in England. This looks really encouraging, please see a breakdown by Region below:
From an individual pharmacy point of view, the top performers are set out below:
How do we grow the numbers next season?
(RWA Decision Support Solution)
Using the live data from the dispensing data on the PMR we will identify:
1
We will start with which patients received the flu jab in your pharmacy over the last 11 months and therefore could be scheduled to receive a repeat flu jab.
2
How many patients are at risk of Flu in each of your stores based on their BNF and age profile.
3
Specifically, which individual patients based on their dispensed medicines are at high risk of Flu, so would be potential patients for the Flu jab. By identifying each patients’ BNF profile and how often the patient visits the pharmacy, we can suggest a list of suitable patients for the flu jab. Often, we restrict this list to people under the age of 65.
4
For the more advanced users, pharmacies can tag patients and then we can identify patients who refused the flu jab in the last flu season, or who had received it at their G.P. surgery. This allows you to eliminate them from your potential list.
By using these simple tools, you can measure consistent performance across all pharmacies. This will also help you plan your next flu season and drive your services growth ahead of the industry norms. If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact Adele or John. We’ll catch up again next month.