Practice managers hear of opportunities for pharmacy
Now is a time of fantastic opportunity for community pharmacy, GP practice managers were told this week.
David Colin-Thomé, the Department of Health’s clinical director
for primary care, told the NHS
Alliance’s practice managers’ conference
that community pharmacy had been on the sidelines of primary care for
too long. As well as medicines management, there were two further opportunities
for community pharmacy to develop its services — managing chronic
diseases and improving public health. Pharmacies have hugely untapped
potential as daytime walk-in centres, he said.
Rory McRae of ChilversMcRae Healthcare agreed. “Let’s pause
and see who are the real workers in primary care,” he told the
meeting. “Pharmacies see six million people a day; GPs see one
million. [Pharmacists] are the providers of the future,” he said.
But Dr McRae saw pharmacies as a constituent part of emerging super-practices
providing super services, super convenience and super quality, not super-sized.
Dr Colin-Thomé agreed that what he termed GP factories had no
place in DoH policy. But he said that he was worried that these might
be created. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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