Over the last few years, we’ve seen a real shift in healthcare, with pharmacists increasingly recognised for the vital clinical role they play in supporting patients and strengthening the wider NHS. And rightly so. Pharmacy has a unique ability to help tackle some of the biggest challenges facing healthcare today, from improving medicine adherence and reducing variation in care, to supporting prevention and helping people stay healthier for longer within their own communities.
Medicines remain the most common intervention in healthcare, yet too often patients still struggle within fragmented care pathways, confusion around treatment, or a lack of ongoing support. That has consequences, not only for patient outcomes, but for the wider system too.
Pharmacists are uniquely placed to bridge that gap. Their expertise in medicines optimisation, combined with their accessibility within local communities, makes them one of the most valuable and underutilised resources in healthcare.
Improving adherence alone presents a significant opportunity. When medicines aren’t taken as intended, conditions can worsen unnecessarily and avoidable complications can follow.
Pharmacists play a critical role here, through structured medication reviews, regular conversations with patients, and practical support that helps people better understand and manage their condition. As medicines and treatment pathways become increasingly complex, particularly for long-term conditions, specialist support becomes even more important.
Community pharmacy also has a crucial role to play in preventing avoidable hospital admissions. Every day, pharmacies support patients with concerns that, if left unmanaged, could escalate into something far more serious. Because pharmacies are embedded within communities and accessible without appointment, they are often the first place people turn to for help and advice. That creates a real opportunity for earlier intervention, better prevention, and more proactive care.
We’re already seeing the impact through services such as Pharmacy First, where pharmacists are helping manage common conditions, including coughs, colds, skin complaints, and uncomplicated infections safely and effectively within the community.
That improves access for patients, reduces pressure elsewhere in the system, and ensures more complex cases receive the attention they need. As experience grows with these services across the four UK countries, so should the conditions available to be treated.
The continued growth of pharmacist independent prescribers is another hugely important development. Enabling pharmacists to assess, respond to symptoms and prescribe within their competence represents a fundamental step forward in how care can be delivered. It means patients can access treatment more quickly, experience greater continuity of care, and avoid unnecessary delays or duplication across the system.
We should also not solely focus on acute presentations and prescribing within the community pharmacy setting. The role that prescribers could and should play in the management of repeat prescribing for long-term conditions is not discussed enough. The re-engineering of that process, with community pharmacy at the heart of it, would release efficiencies across the whole supply chain that would benefit patients, community pharmacy, wholesale and the respective UK governments alike.
The expanding role of pharmacists within Primary Care Networks is equally significant. This isn’t simply about redistributing workload, it’s about redesigning care around patients and making better use of clinical expertise across the system.
Pharmacists working within PCNs are helping increase capacity while also supporting a more preventative model of healthcare, stabilising conditions earlier and reducing reliance on acute services. What would be great is the digital integration of community colleagues to ensure continuity of care can be delivered.
At its heart, this is about improving outcomes for patients. Better access to care, better use of medicines, and a stronger focus on prevention represent one of the NHS’s greatest opportunities to improve population health while easing system pressures. The evidence increasingly shows that when we intervene earlier and support patients consistently, outcomes improve and inequalities can begin to reduce.
Pharmacy sits firmly at the centre of that ambition. Whether in community pharmacy, Primary Care Networks or through the growing number of pharmacist prescribers, pharmacists are becoming one of the most important clinical touchpoints within the healthcare system. They are highly skilled, highly accessible, and ideally placed to help patients get the very best from their medicines while preventing illness before it escalates.
If we are serious about improving adherence, reducing variation, preventing avoidable admissions and delivering more preventative care, then we must also be serious about fully recognising and fairly remunerating the role pharmacists and their teams can and should play at the centre of patient care.
(Harry McQuillan is the chairman of Numark)
