Stepping into my roles as CEO for Community Pharmacy Arden and Community Pharmacy Herefordshire and Worcestershire, alongside Community Pharmacy London, has given me a perspective I didn’t fully appreciate before.
We understand the theory of Community Pharmacy’s value. We talk about access, prevention, and reducing pressure elsewhere. But seeing it up close, across so many contractors, brings a different level of clarity.
The value of Community Pharmacy is not theoretical. It is already being delivered, every single day, at scale.
Across the nearly 1,600 contractors I now support and represent, there are thousands of daily patient interactions that simply would not land anywhere else. Minor illness advice, urgent medicines supply, reassurance, early clinical intervention. This is not happening in pilots or reports. It is happening consistently, in real communities.
And yet, the system still behaves as though this value is optional.
That is the disconnect we need to address.
A front door the NHS underuses
If you look at the NHS 10-year ambitions, whether that is prevention, access, or care closer to home, Community Pharmacy is not just aligned to those goals. It is already delivering against them.
Take access, General Practice continues to carry significant pressure, with demand outstripping capacity in many areas. Community Pharmacy is often the release valve, absorbing that demand both informally and through services like Pharmacy First.
But we are still underusing that front door.
Patients already trust and use pharmacies. They walk in without friction. No triage model is more efficient than a physically accessible service embedded in the community. The opportunity is not to create demand, but to manage the demand that already exists.
Pharmacy First has shown what is possible. But it is still only a starting point.
Prevention happens where people are
One of the clearest opportunities sits in prevention, particularly cardiovascular disease.
Community Pharmacy reaches people that other parts of Primary Care do not. Patients who do not attend GP appointments still walk into pharmacies. That creates a unique opportunity for early intervention.
Blood pressure checks, lifestyle conversations, early risk identification. These are not complex interventions, but they are high impact when delivered consistently and at scale.
The challenge is not capability. It is integration.
Too often, risk is identified in a pharmacy but not effectively connected into the wider system. Data does not flow. Follow up is inconsistent. That is not a pharmacy issue, it is a system design issue.
If we are serious about prevention, pathways need to start wherever the patient presents.
Avoiding pressure before it escalates
There is also a quieter contribution that often goes unrecognised: preventing deterioration.
Medication adherence, inhaler technique, early escalation of symptoms. These are everyday interactions in Community Pharmacy that stop issues from becoming crises.
A well-timed conversation can prevent an exacerbation. That in turn can avoid a GP appointment, an out of hours call, or even a hospital admission.
Because this activity sits in the background, it is rarely measured or prioritised.
We need to get better at evidencing this impact so it is properly considered in how the system plans and allocates resources.
The missing piece in neighbourhoods
As neighbourhood working becomes central to NHS strategy, Community Pharmacy should be a core partner.
In some areas, it is. In others, it is still being treated as an afterthought.
Too many neighbourhood models are being designed around General Practice alone, with pharmacy considered later. That approach is flawed.
Neighbourhoods are about wrapping care around populations. You cannot do that effectively while excluding the most accessible healthcare setting in that community.
Community Pharmacy brings something different. It is open longer. It is embedded in daily life. It reaches people who are often missed elsewhere.
But to play that role fully, pharmacy needs to be included from the outset.
Being honest about the barriers
There are real challenges.
Relationships across Primary Care are improving, but they are not universally strong. In some places, there is still misunderstanding between sectors.
Data sharing remains a major barrier. Without reliable, two-way information flow, collaboration becomes harder.
And then there is the financial reality. Many contractors are operating under sustained pressure. That inevitably drives a focus on immediate sustainability rather than wider system leadership.
These are not reasons to step back. But they do explain why progress is uneven.
Collaboration does not happen because we say it should. It happens when the conditions make it possible.
What this means going forward
One of the clearest reflections from my first months in these roles is that Community Pharmacy does not need to prove its value. It needs the system to use it properly.
The sector is resilient, capable, and already delivering far more than it is often credited for.
The question is not whether Community Pharmacy can support the future of the NHS. It is whether the NHS is prepared to fully integrate Community Pharmacy into that future.
If we get this right, the impact is significant. Better access for patients. Reduced pressure on general practice. Earlier intervention. Stronger neighbourhoods.
If we do not, we will continue to underuse one of the most accessible and trusted parts of Primary Care.
And in the current environment, that is not a position the NHS can afford to be in.
(Conor Price is Chief Executive Officer for Community Pharmacy London, Arden and Herefordshire & Worcestershire, and Director of CoreHealth Partners, working nationally to bring General Practice, Community Pharmacy and wider Primary Care closer together. With a background spanning frontline delivery and system leadership, he focuses on relationships, data and digital innovation that enable collaboration and practical reform across the NHS.)
