Evidence of benefits needed if pharmacists want to succeed in PBC
Good evidence of the benefits of pharmacy-based services will be essential if pharmacists are to wrest control of practice-based commissioning from GPs, the All-Party Pharmacy Group's inquiry into the future of pharmacy heard this week.
Sandra Gidley (Lib Dem, Romsey) asked witnesses from primary care organisations
what they thought needed to be done to counter GPs’ concerns over
pharmacists encroaching on their territory. Good evidence of pharmacists
providing improved services is the key, said Donal Markey, community
pharmacy development manager at Richmond and Twickenham Primary Care
Trust.
“If you are trying to be innovative, it is difficult to find evidence,
certainly UK-based evidence, of a pharmacist intervention service improvement — that
is what I have found from a primary care trust level.”
Without appropriate evidence, pharmacists are reliant on the goodwill
of GPs to move forward on practice-based commissioning, he said. He added
that pharmacists’ decisions over which areas they should tackle
were also important, particularly in terms of choosing a quality and
outcomes framework area to target. “You’ve got to be clever
about what you are going to go for,” he said. “The LPCs all
come along with the same ideas, but they have got to start being more
innovative in what they want to do and encourage pharmacists on the ground
to go along with that.” |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader