Part of the solution
Gongs and wrongs

Part of the solution

New Labour must deliver on public services, the Prime Minister (Tony Blair) said on June 8 following the Government’s numerically convincing if somewhat grudging re-election. For health that means the National Health Service plans and their associated pharmacy plans for England, Scotland and Wales. These are now the only game in town.

The Government needs to be seen to deliver tangible results of its investment in health by the time of the next election in 2005 or 2006. Pharmacy must set its mind to being part of the solution for delivering on these plans, for if it does not it will be seen as part of the problem and pushed ruthlessly aside. The establishment of new services, such as medicines management and shared care between hospital and community pharmacies could be small but useful steps in revamping the NHS. Although they are not as headline grabbing as new hospitals they would have a real impact on the health of individual patients, particularly the elderly who, as this election has shown, are more inclined to vote than other age groups. But if these new services are to move on from pilot status and become a fact of life, the Government will have to provide adequate funding for new models of pharmacy remuneration.

The ministerial team at the Department of Health is largely unchanged in the post-election reshuffle. Individual responsibilities had not been allocated as The Journal went to press, but we hope that pharmacy continues to fall within the remit of Lord Hunt of King’s Heath. Since his appointment as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, pharmacy has started to come out of the shadows and been given long overdue recognition. A Minister who knows what he is talking about is one to be treasured.

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Gongs and wrongs

This Saturday sees the publication of the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Medical knights and dames are two a penny: the chairmen of the BMA’s Council and the GMC, the presidents of certain Royal Colleges, chief medical officers and academics can expect such recognition. What does it say about pharmacy that such accolades are so rare that few people can remember one being granted? Of course, there is a danger that if an honour was always bestowed on, say, the President of the Society it might attract the wrong types to serve on Council, but nevertheless, in Blair’s supposedly meritocratic world, pharmacy would see itself as taking its place on the top NHS table if knighthoods or damehoods were awarded on a regular basis.

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