The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7406 p739
24 June 2006

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Parliamentary group launches pharmacy inquiry

An inquiry into the future of pharmacy has been launched by Parliament's All-Party Pharmacy Group.

Announcing the inquiry this week at an APPG meeting attended by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, APPG chairman Howard Stoate (Lab, Dartford) said: “We want to examine what pharmacists need to do in order to contribute further to health care — both in the community and in secondary care settings.” Dr Stoate added that there had been encouraging progress recently, including the implementation of the community pharmacy contract in England and the roll-out of medicines use reviews. “But, frankly, it’s too patchy, it’s not consistent and it appears that there’s not enough joined up thinking,” he added. “We need to start looking now at how pharmacy’s expertise and resource can be deployed to maximum effect.”

Dr Stoate said that the inquiry would challenge the profession, policy makers and the NHS to think about how pharmacy services should develop over the coming years.

As a first step, the group is to distribute a questionnaire to relevant stakeholders. But views from any interested party will be welcomed and the questionnaire will be available from the APPG website next week (www.appg.org.uk).

After that, the group’s regular public meetings will take the form of evidence sessions, with invited witnesses. Everyone at the meetings will be allowed to put questions to the witnesses. The first evidence session will be in July. The group is aiming to produce a report and recommendations at the turn of the year, but this is not a firm deadline. The report will only be published once the group believes it has all the information it needs.

The inquiry is being launched because members of the group, and others, are concerned that there is not enough thinking going on around how pharmacy will develop. They believe that developing the contribution the profession can make to health care will involve more than just making the new contract work.

President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Hemant Patel said: “I am delighted that the APPG has decided to focus on this important issue. The timing is crucial — there is so much aspiration and expectation surrounding the pharmacy agenda. As well as charting the way forward, we need to ensure that there is a matching means of delivery for success in all NHS settings. We shall, of course, engage fully with this important new piece of work, which I am sure will be another landmark for the group. The inquiry will be separate from our own Pharmacy 2020 initiative but, as the APPG chairman, Howard Stoate, has pointed out, its findings will help inform our work to develop a strategy for the future of the profession.”

The inquiry has been welcomed by the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, which intends to give evidence.

PSNC head of NHS services Alastair Buxton said: “This comes at an exciting time for pharmacy, when pharmacist’s skills are being used to their full potential through the pharmacy contract and with the introduction of pharmacist prescribing. The inquiry will provide a useful focal point for discussions between the profession and parliamentarians to shape future health policy.”

Ms Hewitt, speaking at the APPG meeting, said that practice-based commisioning, backed up by more expert commissioning from primary care trusts, provided an enormous opportunity for pharmacists to be thinking in entrepreneurial and innovative ways how they could transform services and pathways through the NHS from the patients’ point of view.

“I’ve no doubt that the APPG will play an important part in bringing you together to generate ideas and ensure that the policy framework, as well as the action on the ground, is right,” she said.