The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7369 p400
1 October 2005

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Pharmacy’s future lies in advanced services

“All pharmacies must determine their timescale for providing advanced services,” says Sue Sharpe, chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee.

“This is where future growth of both services and income is most secure. There is funding for advanced services and it will grow.” Speaking at this week’s UniChem convention in Bali, Indonesia, Mrs Sharpe said that some of the requirements may be burdensome to meet, but they could provide a structure to address important issues for the future.

Some pharmacies had made tremendous progress with the new pharmacy contract and were seizing the opportunities it offered. Helping patients with long-term conditions was one such opportunity.

“If we get the implementation of this contract right, there is a real opportunity for pharmacy to grow the services that it provides,” Mrs Sharpe said. “This is where pharmacists can help with much of the routine care. This is where pharmacist prescribing is most likely to be of use and this is where the advanced services focus.”

But there were problems that were not of the profession’s making, Mrs Sharpe explained. There were real problems in relation to pharmacy at some primary care trusts. These included lack of comprehension, lack of ability or willingness to use pharmacies and the overwhelming problem of budget deficits. Some PCTs had well-established relationships with their pharmacies and understood how they could be used to provide a range of services, but others were deaf to the messages. This, Mrs Sharpe believed, had been recognised by the Government and was not unrelated to the expected reduction in PCT numbers over the next year or two.

But this would make things hard for local pharmaceutical committees and pharmacies to negotiate enhanced services and would make it difficult to achieve the assurances that contractors want that enhanced services will continue to be commissioned under the new arrangements.