The Primary Care Pharmacists Association (PCPA) has welcomed the National Health Service plan published by the Government on July 27.
In a statement to The Journal on August 17, the PCPA says that the plan includes exciting opportunities for pharmacists. These include personal medical service-style pilots to try out alternative contracts for community pharmacy services. The plan suggests that these could cover areas such as medicines management and repeat prescribing in community pharmacy.
The PCPA says that there are huge opportunities for pharmacists to contribute to the NHS plan for primary care in health promotion and primary care pharmacy, for example, to provide pharmaceutical care for older people and to contribute to the prevention and management of coronary heart disease and mental illness.
"Primary care pharmacists will be part of the wider use of multidisciplinary teams and better skill mix in primary care and will be instrumental in the dissemination and use of new guidelines for each condition," it says.
"Five hundred new one-stop primary care centres will include pharmacists - a great opportunity for an extension of primary care pharmacy into all one-stop centres. Electronic prescribing of medicines by 2004 will give patients faster and safer prescribing as well as easier access to repeat prescriptions, but will also allow more rational use of repeat prescribing systems and less waste of NHS resource."
The group also welcomes the proposed introduction of patient group directions and instalment dispensing of repeat prescriptions.
It adds: "To be most effective, pharmacists should be able to perform clinical monitoring around the supply, eg, checks on compliance, monitoring of efficacy and adverse effects. This type of service needs to be done in conjunction with the general medical practitioner as part of the practice team."