Why your views and the Pharmacy Vision matter…

Jay Patel. Executive Director at Day Lewis plc, PSNC Committee Member and Vision Steering Group Member

By Jay Patel, Executive Director at Day Lewis plc, PSNC Committee Member and Vision Steering Group Member

Every pharmacy contractor in England is under immense pressure from real term falls in their NHS income and the spiralling costs of doing business. PSNC is working hard to mitigate the impact on contractors but, faced with a government that will not recognise the damage being done to the pharmacy network and which insists on sticking to the five-year pre-COVID and pre-Brexit agreement, there has thus far been limited room for manoeuvre.

The five-year Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) comes to an end in 2024. This provides an opportunity for a reset, and before then a chance for community pharmacy to promote its ambitions, and work collaboratively with Government and NHS England on a plan to develop and put in place services that will benefit patients and be cost-effective for them, and fairly-funded and properly resourced for pharmacy.

This is why I believe the work to develop a vision and strategic options is so important. It is a vital part of the groundwork that will inform negotiations in the run up to 2024. There is no doubt that those negotiations will be absolutely critical to the future of the community pharmacy sector.

I hope the vision will provide PSNC and the wider sector with some of the ammunition it needs to convince Government that community pharmacy is an investable proposition, and that in return Government needs to provide pharmacy contractors with a sustainable future. It won’t just be a pharmacy wish-list, but an independent report covering both our ambitions as a sector and our challenges and strategic options going forwards.

PSNC sees the vision report as something that will have a real and positive impact on the sector’s future. Ultimately, we want to use it to persuade policymakers to think differently about community pharmacy and put more investment in the sector.

There’s clearly no shortage of ideas about the range of clinical services that the community pharmacy sector could deliver in future, but the challenge will be to have a realistic funding framework and capacity to deliver it. The vision therefore needs to have clout, and that is why PSNC has commissioned Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund to develop it. An independent report from two of the most highly respected organisations in healthcare policy will have the credibility to persuade commissioners and others that community pharmacy can deliver.

But the vision must be something we can all buy into. It needs to have the support of contractors and, indeed, the whole sector. That is why your views are important and why they are being sought in a consultation that runs until December 9th. This gives you a first opportunity to have your say.

There will be further opportunities to share your views during the project, but this survey will set the agenda and give views that will inform the early work of Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund.

The consultation takes the form of an online survey. You can contribute anonymously, and the survey allows for free text responses to give you as much scope for sharing views and ideas as possible. The questions being asked are:

• Thinking about the future of community pharmacy, what would “good” look like, from either a community pharmacy, NHS or patient perspective?
• What are the key building blocks that need to be in place to achieve that ambition?
• Thinking about past policies and developments in pharmacy practice and possible future developments, what are the key barriers to change?
• Thinking about past policies and developments in pharmacy practice and possible future developments, what are the key enablers of change?
• Are there innovative models of the delivery of community pharmacy services that you are aware of that should be explored during the development of the vision?

We all know that things have got to change for community pharmacy to remain sustainable and relevant for modern healthcare delivery. This is an opportunity to help that happen.

Despite the flat funding of the past few years, there have been some interesting new service developments under the CPCF and we need to start making those sustainable. I believe the vision project is an opportunity to build on that and make clinical service delivery a cornerstone of community pharmacy services in the future.

The number of independent pharmacist prescribers is rising fast. The NHS cannot afford to ignore this valuable resource. Developments in IT mean that primary care is – albeit painfully slowly – getting more joined up.

There are other encouraging signs. The Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, told an NHS Providers conference in Liverpool recently that the Department of Health and Social Care will be “looking at the skills mix in primary care … looking at how we can progress Pharmacy First. Exploring ways to do things differently, such as new areas like home testing, and redesigning patient pathways so that all the burden doesn’t fall on GPs”.

So let’s not waste the opportunity. If the vision is to have real influence, then it needs to have backing from across the sector. Your view is important in helping shape that consensus.

The open consultation runs until 11.59pm on Friday 9th December 2022.

Go to the PSNC website and have your say in your future.