Stop Smoking Advanced Service
The NHS Community Pharmacy Smoking Cessation Service was launched on 10th March 2022 as an Advanced Service. NHS England (NHSE) has commissioned this service as ‘a branch of the wider aim of supporting hospital patients to continue their stop smoking efforts after discharge, which is expected to increase one-year quit rates by 11% and, when implemented, is expected to save the NHS £85 million in healthcare resource use within one year (Mullen, 2010; Royal College of Physicians, 2018).’
Key Information
All of the key information about this service including the service specification can be found on the Community Pharmacy England.
Community Pharmacy England has particularly highlighted that ‘NHS Trusts currently have their focus on recovery following COVID-19 and consequently they will not all immediately start to make referrals to the service; NHSE expects most to be making referrals within two years from the commencement date.’ Contractors should bear this statement in mind when making decisions about when to sign up to provide the service.
It’s important to note that at the moment, the service can only be delivered by a pharmacist due to the VAT rules that exist when other members of the pharmacy team provide a service.
Update as of 5th July 2023
Community Pharmacy West Yorkshire is working closely with the local NHS Trusts as they start to make referrals into community pharmacy for the Smoking Cessation Service. We understand that some of our NHS Trusts have now started to make referrals. All our local NHS Trusts have plans in place for going live over the coming weeks and will be starting to send referrals shortly. Pharmacies that have signed up for this service should be ready to accept referrals. If you are not yet ready to deliver, please spend some time getting ready for service delivery. All the information about the service is available here.
Contractors who have not yet signed up to deliver this service, may want to consider whether they would like to provide it now that referrals into the service have started. See here for further information.
Post-Event Messages
A summary of the outcomes of the service provision must be provided to both the patient’s GP and the referring trust. Appendices D & E of the service specification outline the core data set which must be sent. Community Pharmacy West Yorkshire has developed the letter templates below which could be used to send the required feedback to practices and trusts.
Post-Event Message – NHS Trust Tobacco Dependency Team
Useful Resources
- VirtualOutcomes (free for all West Yorkshire pharmacy teams): Pharmacy Team Training
- CPPE also has a suite of resources in relation to smoking cessation.
Last Updated: 31st July 2023
