The NHS 10-year-Plan can’t fulfil its long-term goals without having a ‘community pharmacy voice’, according to Community Pharmacy England (CPE) board member Jay Patel.
Patel believed that whilst the government has yet to fully workout how it will implement the 10-Year-Plan, its key ideas suggest a central for community pharmacy.
“I always say there were positives in the 10-Year-Plan,” said Patel.
“The three areas it talks about - moving care from hospital into community, from treatment into prevention, and the movement from android to digital. We’ve done so much work in these spaces over the last few years.
“The government have a vision - I don't think they have thought through how they're going to get there. We as a sector, would tell the government that if they were to go and brand that vision and take it out the public, it's hard to do so without having a community pharmacy voice in every one of those debates, because everyone of their targets is exactly what we do.”
Patel was speaking to over 250 delegates at the Avicenna Conference at Sheraton Skyline Hotel at Heathrow on Sunday.
Salim Jetha, chair of Avicenna Membership Services, outlined the themes for the conference which were how does community pharmacy become regulatory compliant, financially sustainable and meet the challenge of tech and AI.
Patel spoke extensively about how he sees community pharmacy becoming financially sustainable.
As well as being a board member at the CPE, he is also Executive Director at Day Lewis Pharmacy. He explained that he understood the pressures that pharmacists faced and that adequate funding was key to their role in the NHS 10-Year-Plan.
The economic analysis of community pharmacy in England found earlier this year that there is £2.3 billion gap in funding for the services that the sector provides.
“It was good to get that out in the open and any dispel assumptions that pharmacy is inefficient. Now we're going to work on bridging that gap,” said Patel.
“I am a community pharmacist, I have nothing but respect for what we do, I have nothing but confidence in our abilities sector to move things forward.
“If we're not happy with the outcomes of where things are going to go, then we should be vocal about that.”
The NHS 10-Year-Plan includes establishing new health centres as part of a Neighbourhood Health Service bringing a broader range of services under one roof. The government said that would free hospitals from ‘perpetual firefighting’ and bring down waiting lists.
The government added that over the next five years, they want to see community pharmacy transition from being focused largely on dispensing medicines to becoming integral to the Neighbourhood Health Service, offering more clinical services.
And as community pharmacists increasingly become able to independently prescribe, there will be an increase in their role in the management of long-term conditions, complex medication regimes, and treatment of obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Baba Akomolafe, superintendent pharmacist at Christchurch Pharmacy, told delegates that it was crucial that community pharmacists changed their mindsets.
“Don't call your practice a shop anymore, you're diminishing who we are. We started as retail pharmacists but we're now community pharmacists – we are clinicians,” he said.
“Everything relates to a mission towards converting your shop ideology into a practice. We need to change our model in order to provide services and this includes renovating premises not for aesthetic purposes, but functionality for the future.”
Baba Akomolafe
Baba stressed the importance of upskilling pharmacy teams to ensure they meet the needs of patients and for staff retention.
He explained that pharmacists needed to create pathways that give staff such as independent prescribers and accuracy checking pharmacy technicians (ACPT) opportunities to prescribe and do patient group directions (PGDs).
“We're moving from the shopkeeper mentality to a practice mentality,” he said.
“When you say practice, you think about dental practice, veterinary practice, GP practice - they don't do solo. This idea of a solo pharmacist is not going to get us into the 10 Year Plan.
“We are not just pharmacy leaders - we are visionaries. It is my responsibility to mentally try and capture what 10 years time looks like and take my team with me on a mission in that direction with a model available that's suitable for all of them.”
In his address to the audience, Avicenna Managing Director Brij Valla chose not to dwell on the challenges the community sector faces, but instead paid tribute to those who were taking innovative steps to overcome these challenges.
“As Albert Einstein said, ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results’. Some of our members have embraced this mindset made bold, positive changes that have helped propel their businesses forward in these difficult times,” said Valla.
