Making the economic argument for community pharmacy
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Key decisions about the future of community pharmacy are made in HM Treasury. So it was great to return there, following publication of the 10 Year Health Plan, to make the case for investment in community pharmacy to deliver the ambitions outlined - ensuring community pharmacies are central to Neighbourhood Health Services.
The 10 Year Health plan strongly supports expanding the NHS clinical role of community pharmacy. Securing investment to deliver this through community pharmacy is something that will provide huge improvements in services for millions of people, and tremendous value for the taxpayer.
We made the case for harnessing the clinical capacity of community pharmacy as the fastest, most efficient and cost-effective way to achieve this vision.
Across all three of the Government’s key strategic priorities for the NHS – treatment to prevention; hospital to community; and analogue to digital – there are numerous opportunities for community pharmacy to support NHS priorities and make a significant impact for patients.
We can also see an opportunity for community pharmacy to take on a much bigger role in prescription management. Delivering this role from community pharmacy would free up significant time in general practice and link to enhanced medicine adherence improving patient outcomes. The capacity released could be the equivalent of appointing many new GPs.
But clearly none of this is possible without a financially sustainable community pharmacy network. As Ministers acknowledge, uplifts in funding in April have not solved historic underfunding which has left pharmacies in a very difficult financial position. We highlighted once again NHS England’s Independent Economic Analysis, which showed pharmacies have a shortfall in NHS income in excess of £2bn.
In the coming weeks we will be continuing to make the economic argument for community pharmacy by publishing new independent research on the return to the taxpayer and NHS from investing in the clinical skills of pharmacy teams.
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