The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7224 p701
16 November 2002

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Priorities and planning framework 2003 — 2006 (more)

Pharmacists could be left out by NHS three-year plans, Hemant Patel warns

Community pharmacies could find themselves frozen out of service developments in the National Health Service in England for the next three years if local pharmaceutical committees do not move swiftly. That is the stark warning issued by Past-President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Hemant Patel in the light of a planning document issued by the chief executive of the NHS, Nigel Crisp, in September.

Reviewing (PDF 50K) Mr Crisp's priorities and planning framework for the years April 2003 to March 2006 (p714), Mr Patel says that there are two significant departures from the past. The first is the concept of three-year planning, rather than planning year by year. Mr Patel says: "This is new and the significance is that if it is not in the plans in the next few weeks then community pharmacy is likely to be out of financial planning at a local level for three years. This is at a time when the Department of Health and Ministers have told the national pharmacy bodies quite bluntly that there will be no money earmarked for community pharmacy locally and that any money pharmacy wants will have to be examined case by case in competition with others at a local level."

The second is an overt statement that the NHS is looking for value for money, with a minimum annual cost improvement of 2 per cent being required. "This is not just more work for the same money," Mr Patel says. "It is more, higher quality work for the same money."

Speaking to The Journal, Mr Patel warned: "This is not about a three-year rolling programme. The Department's paper sets out national priorities which are 'musts'. They have to be delivered within three years. Things presently done in secondary care need to be put into primary care. Things that can be done by health professionals other than doctors need to be pushed out to them. Pharmacists will be doing things that doctors are currently doing."

The Department's paper says that developing the capacity of NHS services will be emphasised. Staff numbers will have to rise, more facilities will have to be provided and there will need to be more equipment and more service and care providers. It adds that the way the system works will have to change to give patients and users more choice over services and that new organisations will have to be used to provide services and care.

Mr Patel said that his local primary care trust chairman had asked whether a few pharmacists could be sent to medical school for three years to convert them into doctors. His response had been to say that 40 per cent of what general practitioners do could be done by pharmacists with no further training.

"Its about going to PCTs with solutions which make sense in the light of they way they are thinking," Mr Patel said. "Medicines management has quite a bit to offer PCTs towards helping keep people in the community." He added: "It is important that community pharmacy sees itself as a partner with hospital pharmacy and community services pharmacy. It will be best to sit round the table with them. The transfer of patients from secondary to primary care is very important because there is a significant cost saving to be made provided patients are not readmitted to secondary care within two weeks."

Mr Patel concluded: "Local pharmaceutical committees should be knocking on doors now and saying that when this three-year plan starts to be discussed they want to be round the table."

Comment, p698

Agenda for 2002, p714 (PDF 50K)