The set-up costs are negligible compared to the savings. An investment of time is needed to establish demand for the service among local GP practices and to increase pharmacist capacity accordingly. In Walsall’s case this was initially done by increasing the hours worked by willing pharmacists in their service level agreements (SLAs). This provided sufficient capacity for 14 practices. As demand increased to 56 practices, it was necessary to recruit more pharmacists.
Increasing capacity through SLAs or recruitment is a recurrent cost and has been factored into the calculation of net savings. Both these activities also require some investment of time as a one-off cost, which is negligible compared with the net savings.
For further information on the topic please go to : https://www.nice.org.uk/Media/.../14-0001-qp-pharmacist-led-rpms.pdf