Key Summary
- Sadik Al-Hassan shared a policy paper which outlines a 20-year blueprint to reshape the NHS.
- It plans to connect GPs, pharmacies, and social care through a single, NHS-owned read-write system to automate patient workflows across a 5-phase journey.
- It also outlines distinct, long-term transition timelines for both sectors to systematically resolve the demand crisis, supported by inflation-linked funding.
Sadik Al-Hassan MP, a registered pharmacist and MP for North Somerset, has shared a policy paper titled "Primary Care 2040: My Prescription for Primary Care," detailing a strategic vision for the National Health Service (NHS).
He introduced it during a parliamentary debate on the future of community pharmacies in Westminster.
The 10-page document argues that the current primary care system is under an immense demand crisis and structural strain because resources are spread too thinly across vague professional boundaries.
“A stable, inflation linked funding arrangement is important to support the transition correcting for historical underpayment. Having a funded resourced team to implement these changes in Primary Care would improve transition success,” he stated.
The document includes two separate roadmap transition models: one for Community Pharmacy and one for General Practice.
They are long-term operational roadmaps spanning from 2025 to 2040.
It details how clinical and administrative responsibilities will gradually shift between community pharmacies and general practices to resolve the current primary care demand crisis.
By creating a clear timeline, the model aims to systematically transition both workforces away from over-stretched, vague roles and move them toward distinct, specialised areas of competence.
The 2040 vision seeks to realign professionals to operate at the peak of their specialised, long-established competencies:
- Pharmacy as the Owner of Medicines: Pharmacy professionals should not be utilised as "cheaper GPs" or "expensive nurses". Their core domain is medicine supply, clinical medicine optimisation, prescribing, and structured deprescribing.
- General Practice as the Owner of Diagnosis & Advocacy: Clinical diagnosis is the core element of general practice. Releasing medicine-related tasks to pharmacies frees up GP capacity to focus on population health, complex care, and acting as a powerful, continuous anchor and advocate for the patient.
The blueprint also details how an NHS-owned, unified digital infrastructure transforms a standard patient illness episode into a proactive, data-driven health intervention through a structured 5-phase patient journey.
The NHS-Owned Digital Foundation
Underpinning this entire structural shift is the creation of a unified, NHS-owned national digital platform for primary, community, and social care. This platform will replace disparate private IT systems, offering role-dependent read-write access to patient medication records (PMR). The system will seamlessly route data from a GP's diagnosis directly into automated pharmacy workflows, tracking patients through a structured 5-phase journey from initial digital triage to remote home monitoring.
A Focus on Deprescribing
The blueprint heavily emphasises tackling the UK's historic "drug-first" approach. It introduces structured deprescribing as a core pharmacy service, arguing that the end of medicine use is just as significant as starting it. By 2040, pharmacists and technicians will actively collaborate with GP surgeries and social prescribing networks to safely wind down therapies that are no longer suitable.
Overcoming Transition Hurdles
Al-Hassan acknowledges significant systemic challenges in achieving this vision, including physical infrastructure limitations, as many current pharmacy premises are unsuitable for multi-consultation clinical layouts.
To support the transition, the paper calls for greater integration of digital sites, an evolution away from strictly face-to-face consultations, and a stable, inflation-linked funding framework to correct historical underpayment across primary care.
