The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7487 p107
2 February 2008

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Consultant pharmacists’ expertise should not be restricted to hospital patients, Society tells Darzi

The expertise of NHS consultant pharmacists should be available to all patients with complex conditions whether or not they are admitted to hospital, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society suggests in its submission to the NHS Next Stage Review for England.
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The suggestion forms part of a series of proposals centred round the premise that health services should be designed to meet patients’ needs rather than according to sectoral and organisational boundaries.

“Services should be organised so that patients can access pharmacists’ expertise when and where they need it. … Many patients with complex conditions who are not admitted to hospital could benefit from [NHS consultant pharmacists’] expertise,” the Society states.

The policy proposals are set out in a letter to health minister Lord Darzi of Denham by Society President Hemant Patel and chairman of the Society’s English Pharmacy Board Paul Bennett. They argue that pharmacy can do more than just shift services to a different location or deliver them more cheaply.

“It can redesign services and repackage combinations of services differently to meet patients’ needs and preferences, for example, by providing expert advice, therapeutic monitoring and screening tests at a convenient time for the service user,” Mr Patel and Mr Bennett say.

They also point out that the pharmacy workforce can create and spread innovative services. “Community pharmacies are businesses: they have the structural and cultural flexibility to roll out significant changes very rapidly.”

In addition to the need to redesign services, they identify the need to increase integration of pharmacy services with other health services.

“The pharmacist must be accepted as a full member of the local health team if their skills are to be effectively deployed,” they say, adding that “services such as medicines use reviews need to be integrated with GP care to benefit patients fully”.

They also suggest that GP practices should be given an incentive to employ sessional pharmacists to work on prescribing quality and cost-effectiveness.