The Value of Community Pharmacy

#valueofpharmacy

In summer 2021 Community Pharmacy England launched a video animation showcasing the important work that community pharmacies do and explaining how, with sustainable funding and ongoing support from Government, their role could be developed further.

Local pharmacies save the NHS half a million GP appointments every week and have been on the frontline of the UK’s COVID-19 response. They have been working hard to maintain the health services that local communities need, but pressures on pharmacies themselves are constant. Whilst they stand ready to play an even bigger role in the recovery from the pandemic, pharmacies need to be fairly funded by the NHS and HM Government to ease financial pressures and avoid patient services being cut. 

Drawing on the results of its 2021 Pharmacy Advice Audit, Community Pharmacy England has developed this animation to help raise awareness of the value of pharmacy services, and how patients and the NHS might be impacted if they were no longer there.

Watch the animation:

Related resources

The animation can be shown at meetings directly from the Community Pharmacy England website, but if you need access to a downloadable version, please email us.

Template Tweets
On social media, please use the hashtag #valueofpharmacy. You may also wish to use some of the draft tweets we have created: Tweet Templates for Value of Pharmacy Animation

2021 Pharmacy Advice Audit
The animation was based on the findings of the Community Pharmacy England Pharmacy Advice Audit 2021. Further resources on this – including a summary, infographic and social media assets – can be found at: cpe.org.uk/adviceaudit

PwC Value of Pharmacy Report (2015/16)

Community Pharmacy England commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) to examine and quantify the economic contribution of community pharmacy in England in 2015. The resulting report analysed the value (net benefits) to the NHS, public sector, patients and wider society of 12 specific services provided by community pharmacy. Services analysed included supervised consumption, emergency hormonal contraception provision, minor ailments, delivering prescriptions and managing drug shortages.

Click on a heading below to reveal more information.

Community pharmacies contributed a net value of £3 billion to the NHS, public sector, patients and wider society in England in 2015 through just 12 services, with a further £1.9 billion expected to accrue over the next 20 years. This means that community pharmacies deliver substantially more in benefits than they receive in compensation, providing excellent value to the Department of Health and Social Care. Pharmacies made more than 150 million interventions through the services in 2015 and there was a benefit of more than £250,000 per pharmacy or £54.61 for every resident of England.

Breaking the combined contribution down into the areas which are benefitting, it was found that: The NHS received a net value of £1,352 million, including cash savings as a result of cost efficiencies, and avoided NHS treatment costs; Other public sector bodies (e.g. local authorities) and wider society together received over £1 billion through increased output, avoided deaths and reduced pressure on other services such as social care and justice; and Patients received around £600 million, mainly in the form of reduced travel time to alternative NHS settings.

The expected amount of public sector spending saved directly as a result of the 12 services analysed in the report is enough, by itself, to offset the entire amount of public funding provided for community pharmacy in 2015. The benefits of all other pharmacy services not covered by the analysis, such as the NHS prescription service, can therefore be seen as additional net benefits of community pharmacy.

PwC concludes that it is important to robustly assess the significance of any proposed changes to the support and delivery of these services.

For more information on this topic please email comms.team@cpe.org.uk