The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7413 p189-192
12 August 2006

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Commissioning services and the new community pharmacy contract:
(2) Drivers, barriers and approaches to commissioning

By Fay Bradley, Rebecca Elvey, Darren Ashcroft and Peter Noyce

Commissioning services series

Abstract

Aim
To identify factors which primary care trusts consider to be barriers and drivers to the commissioning of services from community pharmacies.

Design
A self-completed questionnaire

Subjects and setting
All PCTs in England

Results
The response rate was 74%. 82% of PCTs reported access to funding to be a barrier to commissioning pharmacy services. Lack of PCT capacity was viewed as a barrier by 59% of PCTs and 53% viewed the impending PCT reconfiguration as a barrier. The main driver to commissioning was reported to be the new pharmacy contract (76%). Relationships between PCTs and local pharmaceutical committees (LPCs) were also viewed positively. The most common approach to commissioning adopted by PCTs was to engage proactively with LPCs and/or local pharmacists (92%). Most PCTs collaborated on the commissioning of pharmacy services with neighbouring PCTs (75%).

Conclusion
Collaboration across PCTs was found to be widespread which may be indicative of the need to address a lack of capacity. PCT reconfiguration also aims to address capacity issues, however this was viewed as a large barrier to commissioning by the respondents and future research will be needed to examine the impact this has on commissioning of community pharmacy services.

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