NPA Rallies Local Authorities To Secure Pharmacy Network In Face Of Polyclinic Plans, UK

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 12 May 2008 - 6:00 PDT

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The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has written to the chairs of all local council Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees (OSCs) in England, asking them to use their powers to ensure that adequate consultation takes place over the development of GP-led health centres.

Local consultations are underway across England, triggered by the recommendations of Health Minister Lord Ara Darzi in his interim report on the NHS.

The NPA is asking OSCs to use their powers of scrutiny under the Consolidated NHS Act 2006 to ensure that

- Consultations are underpinned by rounded information that explains the full potential impact on services and communities surrounding the health centre, including those not in the direct vicinity.

- That the next stages of the procurement and implementation process apply this same logic - namely that the impact of a major primary care estate development will be felt outside the direct vicinity of that development.

- That PCTs commit to a 'neighbourhood access analysis' that assesses whether a care void could be created in pockets, and considers the potential for expanding community pharmacy based services (and other genuinely community-based services) to ensure continued, indeed improved, access to services. Such an analysis could be incorporated into health inequality impact assessments.

The NPA's Head of External Relations, Stephen Fishwick, said:

"GP consolidation on any significant scale would have an appreciable impact on the surrounding pharmacy network and its ability to deliver accessible health services, particularly if the GP-led health centre also contains a pharmacy."

"We are not anti-polyclinics per se. Indeed, if these centres are sensitively integrated with existing health infrastructures, they present opportunities for community pharmacy. But we are concerned that co-location is being enacted by PCTs with less attention given to integration - the terms are far from interchangeable in this context. We suspect that PCT public consultations may not in all cases have explained this tension."

The NPA's move coincides with a speech given by Lord Darzi in which he pledged that change would only be carried out on the basis of clear evidence of benefit to patients and that local areas will be able to challenge reforms through councils' power to hold health services to account.

The NPA has, in voluntary membership, the vast majority of the UK's community pharmacy owners. The Association supplies members with a range of services to help them maintain and improve the health of the communities they serve.

National Pharmacy Association