The Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) has called for a national pharmacy diabetes screening service that could save the NHS £50m a year, it announced this week (September 18). 

The trade association’s report urges NHS England to commission this service “to provide newly diagnosed diabetics with easily accessible treatment through community pharmacy” as well as improve IT communications so test results can be shared “seamlessly” between pharmacies and GP surgeries.

Read more: Diabetes: how can you help patients manage their risk? 

The service will focus detection and prevention of people with or at risk of type 2 diabetes, and the CCA say the service would allow community pharmacies to: 

CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison said a national pharmacy diabetes screening service “makes sense for patients, the NHS and the UK economy” and could “free up as many as 25 million GP appointments a year”, which the CCA report as equivalent to an entire month’s worth of GP appointments. 

Diabetes budget to grow 

The report says that other barriers to early detection and prevention include “long waits” for GP appointments and patients travelling “long distances” for the appropriate care, as around 4 million people are diagnosed with diabetes and around 2 million are at high risk in the UK. 

It added that diabetes “accounts for 10% of [the NHS’] total budget, an estimated £15bn” which is expected to grow to “17.2% by 2035/36”, as the “the loss of productivity and diabetes-related disability costs the UK over £20bn annually” 

Read more: CPE release animation to introduce ‘key messages to MPs’ 

Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) chief medical officer Dr Manisha Kumar said the ICP is keen to see how to “develop more opportunities to deliver these services in Community Pharmacy settings” as “new models of care supporting early identification […] including utilising the skills of Community Pharmacy is part of our neighbourhood delivery model”.