Senior representatives from the Company Chemists Association (CCA), Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) and National Pharmacy Association (NPA) met Care minister Stephen Kinnock and Department of Health officials on Tuesday (28), ahead of the expected start of negotiations for the next round of community pharmacy funding.
In the meeting, they pressed for the need to close the £2.6 billion funding gap identified in NHS NHS-commissioned Independent Economic Analysis between the costs of running a pharmacy and funding received from the NHS.
They reminded the government of the immense pressure facing pharmacies of all sizes and recent funding uplifts needed to be the beginning of a journey, not the end of one.
They also raised that with the right support, pharmacies can help achieve the government’s ambitions in the 10 Year Plan to provide an expanded range of services and help shift care into the community.
The meeting at the Department of Health and Social Care was attended by CCA chief Malcolm Harrison, Ian Strachan of the IPA, NPA chief executive Henry Gregg, and NPA chair Olivier Picard.
NPA chief executive Gregg said, “It was really important today that we joined together as a sector so could deliver the same message, loud and clear to government ministers.
“Pharmacies have enormous potential to provide a wider range of services to their patients than ever before, delivering massive benefits to the whole health system and helping ministers to achieve the 10-year plan.
“However, this cannot happen whilst pharmacies have been closing in record numbers and those that have kept their doors open have done so by going to extraordinary and unsustainable lengths.
“We have told the government today that we’re up for working with them to deliver new services but only with a sustainable funding package that closes the funding gap identified by the NHS’s own analysis.
“We also raised with ministers the need to utilise independent prescribers or risk seeing these valuable skills leave community pharmacy.”
IPA CEO Dr Leyla Hannbeck said, “We thank minister Stephen Kinnock and the DHSC team for a productive meeting today.
"IPA had the opportunity to further discuss with the Minister our call for invest to save in community pharmacy by reinvesting back into our sector the savings that community pharmacies make through their incentivised procurement. This does not require new money from the NHS and will provide community pharmacies with the financial boost they desperately need.
"We also discussed the savings that the NHS would make by allowing more vaccinations through community pharmacies. Prevention, weight loss management are all prudent investments offering not only value for money but improved patient outcomes. Firstly, however, the liquidity of pharmacies everywhere must be stabilised before the innovation can truly start.
"A further outcome we wanted from this meeting with the Minister was to ensure a united positive and realistic front from pharmacy bodies and we have achieved that. We look forward to continuous dialogue with Minister Kinnock and his team and we are encouraged by the fact that he is listening."
CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison said, “We were delighted to join forces with our fellow trade associations to meet with the Minister.
"We are steadfast in our collective belief that community pharmacy has a crucial role to play in delivering the government’s 10-Year Plan for the NHS. Our own modelling shows how pharmacies could help to free up 51m primary care appointments each year.
"Delivering change of this kind, however, relies on investment to close the gap between the cost of providing NHS pharmaceutical care and what the NHS currently pays. For pharmacies to be able to deliver more quality clinical care, and provide additional capacity in NHS primary care, the foundations must be fixed.”
