NPA Board Meeting - October 2008, UK

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 05 Nov 2008 - 2:00 PDT

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NPA Chairman, Paul Bennett, comments on some of the items discussed at the October 2008 board meeting:

1. Pharmacy White Paper - legislative consultation

"The NPA Board welcomed publication of the Pharmacy in England white paper earlier this year, but warned that the detail of the proposals would be at least as important as the intent behind them. The legislative proposals now before us must balance stability with opportunity while minimising administrative burdens.
i) Making Community Pharmacy central to NHS service provision

The use of pharmaceutical needs assessment to determine where future pharmacy provision should be commissioned aligns pharmacy with the decisions about other areas of healthcare and acknowledges that the planning of a vital community service should not be left entirely to the vagaries of the market. However, the use of pharmaceutical needs assessment is not without risk. Robust oversight and specific training for those involved in using these planning tools to determine new contracts and new services is essential. Poor decisions using weak assessments will be bad for pharmacy and bad for the NHS. For this reason we expect SHAs to be directly involved in the performance management of PCTs, within a framework of unequivocal national guidance and an expectation from the Department of Health that the process will be a high priority for NHS commissioners.

ii) Reducing the regulatory burden on community pharmacy

The NPA cautions the Government against cumulative regulatory burden that could gradually choke pharmacists' enthusiasm to engage with PCTs to expand and improve services.

Specifically, we are concerned about the lack of detail in respect of Quality Accounts and would need to see a thorough cost-benefit analysis of this proposal before we can support its application to pharmacy. As for Supplementary Lists, these were rejected when first proposed and it is hard to see any benefits from localising this regulation when a national regulator is being created from first principles. Community Pharmacy does not operate in the same way as other healthcare professions and the Department may regret trying to force community pharmacy into a regulatory format that does not fit our function.

iii) Creating the right environment for collaboration

For our members to invest in NHS services, confidence in a stable NHS environment is required. It is our belief that the review of the arrangements for dispensing doctor provision in this consultation has distracted from the White Paper's main aim: to unleash the potential of community pharmacy as an NHS service provider. If the sector is to move quickly to realising that potential, all our members will need to be focussed and supported. Now is not the time to disrupt local relationships, rather a time to collaborate and cultivate a common understanding between all those who work for and within the NHS of how community pharmacy can play its part in full.

I have asked the NPA executive to write to each NPA member in England to outline our position on the Legislative Consultation and to encourage every pharmacy owner to respond to the consultation personally."

2. Branded prescription medicine supply issues

"We have seen over the past weeks and months a deterioration in the availability of branded medicines to our members. The root causes of these supply issues are spread throughout the supply chain, meaning that no one part of the chain can fix the problem in isolation. I am asking all the administrations throughout the UK responsible for healthcare to give this issue the urgent attention it needs. I am calling on those in Government and all those in the medicines supply chain to first recognise together and secondly act together to avert medicine shortages."

3. EPS user forums

Board members reiterated the importance of a managed roll-out of EPS. We need guarantees that it will work technically, be business functional, improve service delivery at pharmacies, and is safe for patients, before full roll-out can be contemplated.

The NPA remains committed to making EPS work for its members. To that end we will soon be setting up an on-line IT user forum. Our members will have an opportunity to feed back their real life experience of EPS in their pharmacy, both bad and good.

Source
Geraldine Clark
Press Manager
National Pharmacy Association Ltd
Mallinson House, 38-42 St Peter's St, St Albans AL1 3NP
http://www.npa.co.uk