The Celesio Award for Excellence in Customer Focus – Other Healthcare Professionals

Summary of work

Winner: Pfizer

The New Medicines Service (NMS) is the fourth Advanced Service added to the NHS community pharmacy contract. It focuses on reducing wasted medicines and improving patient health by encouraging adherence to medicines. To be successful, pharmacists needed to be trained before the launch in October 2011. Limited resources were available to support pharmacists wishing to implement the NMS. 

Pfizer Healthy Partnerships (PHP) is a selection of tools and resources connecting pharmacists with professional and commercial support. As part of PHP’s commitment to Supporting Professional Development and responding to environmental changes with practical, collaborative initiatives, Pfizer identified an opportunity to support pharmacists in understanding and delivering the NMS ahead of launch. 

Using a collaborative approach, PHP partnered with Lloydspharmacy, Numark and the South West England Local Pharmaceutical Committee (SWLPC) to develop and implement bespoke NMS training for each customer group. This ensured all pharmacists received appropriate training in line with customer objectives and patients’ needs. 

The training was extremely well received, reaching a total of 3,300 pharmacists through 36 workshops over seven weeks.

Executive summary as submitted

Judges comments

"This programme was rolled out very quickly and its scale and speed clearly differentiated it from other entries. There was explicit co-investment with pharmacy chains, showing demonstrable recognition of the value Pfizer brought to the table.

Addressing an incredibly important issue – that of waste management in the NHS – the positive customer feedback it garnered showed the magnitude of its reach."