How pharmacists can cash in on medicines management services
From next year, community pharmacists may wish to convince their local GP practices that pharmacists are the most appropriate health professional to provide medicines management services.
Under the new GP contract, which comes into force next April, GPs will
have to meet targets which will include an element of medicines management
in 10 disease areas.
It will be up to practices to decide how best to meet the medicines management
targets and they may decide that it can best be delivered by their own
practice nurse or a practice pharmacist.
A warning to community pharmacists about the future provision of medicines
management services comes in a joint resource pack on getting started
in medicines management, which has been produced by the National Pharmaceutical
Association and the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee.
Georgina Craig, head of NHS service development at the NPA, who helped
produce the pack, said: “If the primary care trust is paying GPs
to meet these medicines management targets, then they won’t want
to pay community pharmacists for achieving these targets as well. There
is a need for pharmacists to work with GPs to highlight the benefits
of joint working and sharing the financial rewards.”
She said that it is unlikely that GPs working on their own will be able
to meet the new contract medicines management targets, but whether the
practices agree to involve community pharmacists will depend on existing
professional relationships.
She added: “If the pharmacist can say to the GP, ‘Give me
this group of patients and I will deliver this quality framework for
you and you will make x amount of money and I will take out so much to
do it,’ then the GP might as well agree because if they don’t
achieve the targets then they don’t make any money.”
She said: “The bottom line for pharmacists is that the money is
going to sit with GPs, and pharmacists are going to have to negotiate
with them, whereas in the past they would have had to deal with the primary
care trust.”
And it is possible, according to Mrs Craig, that once the new pharmacy
contract is approved, primary care trusts may have to mediate between
GPs and community pharmacists about who is the best health professional
to meet local and national medicines management targets.
The current advice to pharmacists to help ensure they maintain a key
role in medicines management is to make sure they are well informed about
local and national health needs and targets.
As a first step, they should get in contact with their local pharmaceutical
committee — details are available from the PSNC — and their
local pharmaceutical adviser who will be able to help with the detailed
information.
The annual patient prospectus produced by individual primary care trusts
is also a valuable source of information because it identifies which
services are already offered and possible gaps which community pharmacists
could fill.
This advice appears in the medicines management resource pack on the PSNC website:
www.medicinesmanagement.org.uk
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