Concerns remain for medicines management roles
Uncertainty continues over where medicines management teams will sit following the reconfiguration of primary care trusts and was highlighted by several speakers at a Pharmacy
Management seminar on practice-based commissioning (PBC) held in Manchester last week. Debate
about this issue has been ongoing since before the reconfigurations came into effect (PJ,
15 July, p65).
Shailen Rao, head of medicines management and diabetes lead at Hillingdon
PCT and chairman of the Primary Care Pharmacists’ Association,
said that all the current medicines management functions will still need
to be carried out but it is unclear which will remain the responsibility
of PCTs and which the PBC clusters will be interested in.
“It is going to be a challenging time for medicines management teams to
try to separate themselves out and make a well informed decision. The danger
is that if the whole structure remains within the PCT, the PBC clusters are likely
to ask questions about what value they are getting from the medicines management
team,” he said. It is important to make sure we are aligned and have a
clear prescription of what value we can add, he told participants.
Peter James, one of the founding GPs in the East Berkshire GP Consortia, proposed
that, in a competitive market, some PBC consortia might be looking to take over
provision of pharmaceutical and prescribing advice from PCTs. He also suggested
that others, such as those in the independent and private sectors, who have not
played a major part before, might be looking to “get a piece of the action” once
consortia are formed.
At the moment it is difficult to see where pharmacists will sit in the future
and whose role it will be, said Dr James. “Is pharmaceutical advice to
PCTs a commissioning function, which would sit within a PCT, or a providing function,
which could sit with the provider” he asked.
Ted Butler, chairman of the meeting and of the editorial board of Pharmacy
Management,
suggested that there are four groups that could potentially give prescribing
advice to practices under PBC: PCTs; prescribing advisers employed directly by
PBC consortia; independent private companies; and hospital pharmacy departments.
A full report of the meeting will be published in next week’s issue of
The Journal.
Progress with
reform A report on progress since publication of the
White Paper “Our
health, our care, our say” (PJ, 4 February, p123) was published last week
by the Department of Health. “Our health, our care, our say: making it
happen” highlights progress made in the past nine months and sets out
action needed to deliver on commitments made in the White Paper. One of the
ongoing
actions listed for primary care trusts is to increase the use and scope of
local pharmacies. |
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