The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7165 p343
15 September 2001

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Internal review planned by the NPA

The National Pharmaceutical Association has adopted a five-year plan to examine what it does and how it does it in order to make changes that will put the association in a better position to help community pharmacists succeed. Mike Thompson asks why

A root and branch review of the National Pharmaceutical Association is to be carried out in the next few years.

The review, set out as the first objective of a five-year plan launched on 9 September, is intended to ensure that the NPA can fulfil its mission to its members (see below).

The proposals, described as a strategic plan for the NPA, claim to set out the key components of “an association with the vision and structure to lead community pharmacy into the millennium and beyond”.

The NPA takes the view that this is necessary because it has a responsibility to ensure the professional and commercial profitability of its community pharmacist members, who it sees as needing help and support if they are to survive and prosper in today’s rapidly changing world.

John D’Arcy, the NPA chief executive, responds to the assertion that the strategy looks like an internal review with an unchallenging time-scale, by saying: “We are not a broken organisation; we are working very well indeed, but there is always room for development. We are not going to sit around navel-gazing and in reflective contemplation.”

Mr D’Arcy says that the plan is set out as a five-year strategy in order to show that what is intended is a long-term process of support for community pharmacy. “If you’re doing a quick and dirty review, you can do that in a month. But if you want a top-to-bottom while you continue to function it’s going to take time. It’s about development and it will take time to do and get right. We will start on most of the objectives immediately, but the delivery will take time.”

Given, then, that the strategy sets out what Mr D’Arcy believes the NPA should be doing anyway, why has it been written down and published to NPA members in a glossy brochure?

John D’Arcy responds: “We need to have the plan written down to show the members.

The final element of the strategy is to bring all community pharmacy owners into membership.

John D’Arcy says: “The community pharmacy pitch is changing enormously, but if we are relevant to everybody except Boots, why is that? Boots’s membership might not be achievable, but it’s an objective.”

He answers that challenge by explaining that the NPA was formed in 1921, when most pharmacies were independents and Boots was the only real multiple, with the aim of championing the cause of pharmacy owners. It was not formed to represent independent pharmacies.

Mr D’Arcy goes on: “We have to represent the sector as a whole. We cannot do this if we speak from a fragmented position. One of the issues is that pharmacy is fragmented and we need to speak with one voice. There is a particular need to do so for community pharmacy.”

With this in mind, the strategy also sets out to find a way of bringing within the NPA fold individual pharmacists who, in the very near future, will hold personal contracts for local pharmaceutical services.

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Mike Thompson is on the staff of The Pharmaceutical Journal