Local Pharmaceutical Committees / PSNC
Exploit accessibility to improve services
Jane Kennedy: health services must fit the patient, not the other
way round |
To create accessible health care services which meet patients’ needs,
doctors need to build effective relationships with community pharmacists,
Jane Kennedy, the health minister with responsibility for pharmacy, said
at the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee’s annual dinner.
“We want to see a much greater focus on earlier prevention and
interventions to promote better health. We want advice and support to
be readily available
for those who need it — especially people with long-term medical
needs and their carers,” she said. “People must have more
choice in where to go for their services and a greater say in how, when
and where they are provided. So services must fit the patient — not
the other way round.”
Services must also be readily accessible, she argued, especially where
health inequalities exist in under-served or deprived areas.
“With your tradition of easy and convenient access for all, and
high public confidence in the services, advice and support available,
you are well
placed to take advantage of this radical change. You have a track record
of providing services which meet patient needs,” she told community
pharmacists.
“You are near where people live, work, shop and travel. You can
use this to act as a lever for more responsive and innovative service
models,” Ms
Kennedy said. Addressing the doctors present, she added: “You need
effective relationships with your pharmacist colleagues now and in the
future to achieve that fundamental shift patients have told us they want.”
She also paid tribute to community pharmacists’ response to the
problems with the new home oxygen service. “You have really stepped
into the breach to ensure patients do not suffer,” she said. “I
want to express my personal regret at what has happened and to reinforce
that we, and the NHS, greatly appreciate pharmacists’ response
and your professional commitment to patient care.”
She also spoke of how the NHS increasingly thinks of holistic primary
care services. “There is no reason why pharmacy should not think
in similar terms — whether as an alternative provider of medical
services where shortfalls in medical services are occurring, or through
closer integrated working with other professions on clinical monitoring
and medicines management, to take just two examples.”
Pharmacy is a quick win for PCTs
Community pharmacy offers a fast way for primary care trusts to meet
the primary care goals set out in the White Paper on health and social
care in England, Barry Andrews, PSNC chairman, said at the committee’s
annual dinner.
The White Paper reads like a checklist of community pharmacy’s
capabilities, he said. “To the many PCTs represented here this
evening, I say this: community pharmacy offers you a real opportunity,
a quick win.
“We have the expertise and the infrastructure to develop services
and deliver access to services quickly and efficiently. Work with your
local
pharmaceutical committees to develop pharmacy services for patients locally. … There
is a great opportunity to be working now with local pharmacists to develop
innovative public health campaigns.”
Mr Andrews warned, however, that continuing delays to the electronic
prescription service are affecting the delivery of repeat dispensing
services and medicines use reviews.
“Unresolved, they will hamper our ability to maximise pharmacy’s
effectiveness and gains for patients,” he said. “I urge PCTs
to work closely with LPCs to ensure that pharmacies have NHS smartcards
as quickly as possible.”
Jane Kennedy said that she appreciated these concerns about the issuing
of smartcards, adding that the Department of Health is monitoring the
situation.
“If progress stalls, we need to understand the reasons why and
the options for appropriate action,” she said. “I would like to take
this opportunity to encourage contractors to contact their dispensing
system suppliers and ensure that they know whether an upgraded system
is available to them and the timescale for its delivery.”
Returned medicines are not safe to sort
Medicines returned to pharmacies by patients cannot be safely sorted,
LPC representatives warned at their annual conference.
They voted to approve a resolution put forward by Durham LPC that all
returned medicines should be forwarded unsorted for disposal by appropriate
waste handling organisations and that, to allow this to happen, any exceptions
required by European law should be sought.
The LPCs also decided that a collection of five resolutions relating
to medicines use reviews should be left on the table and that the PSNC
would carry out a review of MURs, including their funding, the service
itself, the capacity of pharmacists to carry out reviews and the case
for reimbursement to be linked to aspects of individual reviews.
The PSNC said it would report on this review of MURs at the LPC conference
next year and provide an interim update during the year. It will also,
it said, provide further guidance for contractors on the current status
of the MUR service.
NHS remuneration should cover bank charges
LPC representatives voted by acclamation to accept a resolution that
bank charges associated with the collection of prescription charges on
behalf of the Government should be taken into account in NHS remuneration.
Divyesh Shah (Leicestershire LPC) said that contractors should not have
to bear the cost of fees charged by banks when prescription charges were
paid by cheques or bank card. “Inland Revenue staff do not pay
bank charges when they collect taxes. Why should we,” he asked.
Before the motion was accepted, PSNC head of finance Mike Dent said that
bank charges were taken into account when the cost of providing NHS pharmacy
services was assessed. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal