Contract review starts to gather evidence
Anne Galbraith |
Pharmacy organisations have started to give evidence to the Department of Health's review
of the pharmacy contract (PJ, 27
January, p99).
Anne Galbraith, who intends to complete the review by the end of March,
took evidence from the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee,
the National Pharmacy Association and the Company Chemists’ Association
last week.
The PSNC’s evidence emphasised the strengths of the current contract
in supporting high levels of access for patients, with that level of
access being dependent on the confidence of businesses to invest in pharmacy
premises and staff.
It was the PSNC’s position that all communities, affluent and socially
deprived alike, need prescribed medicines to be supplied promptly with
advice, support for self care and over-the-counter medicines, along with
support for healthy lifestyles.
A special meeting of the PSNC is now to consider questions posed by Mrs
Galbraith. The committee will put forward proposals that:
• Offer value for money for the NHS and primary care trusts
• Reduce cost, complexity and administrative burdens on primary care
trusts
• Support increased access where services are inadequate
• Develop the value of community pharmacy services for PCTs
• Support Government health priorities
• Support competition and choice
• Restore business confidence
The CCA told Mrs Galbraith that developing the contract through advanced
services would be a powerful signal to the NHS that the Government was
serious about community pharmacy as a provider of clinical
services.
It expressed concern that the NHS did not understand the environment
in which private sector businesses, such as pharmacies, invest, saying
that pharmacies had invested in good faith on the back of the new contract
and that the current direction of travel was right. It wanted to see
more competition between different primary care service providers and
over enhanced services in particular. The GP contract should include
incentives that would encourage repeat dispensing and medicines use reviews,
and GPs and pharmacists should be able to communicate electronically.
Prevarication over role-based access to patient records for pharmacists
should stop.
The NPA told Mrs Galbraith that PCTs needed to make better use of the
enhanced services that community pharmacies could offer. The MUR service
needed to be linked to the GPs’ quality and outcomes framework,
or to some other mechanism that would promote it. There should also be
incentives to encourage teamworking with GPs.
It said that controls over the awarding of new pharmacy contracts were
needed because without them PCTs would not have the sort of control they
needed if they were to commission services effectively. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader