NHS 75th Birthday

As the NHS marks its 75th birthday, we at Community Pharmacy England want to use this opportunity to highlight and celebrate all of the highly skilled individuals that make community pharmacy such an exceptional and vital part of our society.

Community pharmacy is an innovative sector having a huge positive impact on the health and wellbeing of the entire population, despite the enormous and unsustainable pressures that all pharmacies are under.

Pharmacy owners and their teams deliver vital public health services at scale and pace as we have seen most recently with the new record for the sector of 5 million flu vaccinations administered and so much more.

As we celebrate and appreciate our pharmacy colleagues across the sector, we are working hard with everyone within the sector to build a stronger and more positive future for community pharmacy. The vision and strategy work by Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund is part of this, and we look forward to their proposals which they will be consulting the sector about very soon.

We commissioned this work to position pharmacy positively for the future and to lay the groundwork for future Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) arrangements. It is critical that the pressures on pharmacies are addressed, and that businesses have a roadmap for the future which they know Government and the NHS are committed to.

The NHS birthday will not feel like a celebration for most pharmacy businesses, but we hope it can be a time for us all to consider how community pharmacy will be in the years ahead and to think about the ways we can overcome the many challenges our sector is facing.

Janet Morrison, Chief Executive of Community Pharmacy England, said:

“This NHS birthday we celebrate all our pharmacy colleagues and teams across the country working tirelessly to support communities with their health needs every day. As the NHS marks this milestone of 75 years, we trust that it will recognise the hard work, dedication, skills and key contribution of community pharmacy within it.

“Community pharmacies are an integral part of the NHS, with millions of people relying on their services every day. Our #NHSBirthdayWish is for pharmacies to be fully valued, supported and funded, and for the full potential of community pharmacy to be utilised within the NHS in years to come. We believe in an ambitious future for pharmacies and the communities they serve, but this will require a community pharmacy sector that is sustainably funded, and reduced pressures on all those who work in it.”