NPA Proposes Pharmacy Solutions For 'Access Critical' Services, UK

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 16 Jan 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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The NPA has responded to Lord Darzi's invitation to submit policy ideas to the next stage review of the NHS. This further submission makes two proposals for maintaining access-critical services in localised settings.

The NPA regards Lord Darzi's long term vision for the NHS as an exciting prospect and is keen for pharmacy to be encouraged to play a full role. The NPA believes that an integrated community pharmacy service would help underpin this vision, but that the opposite could also hold true.

One stop centres could dislocate the existing accessible, community-based network of pharmaceutical care, presenting a real threat of some neighbourhoods becoming 'health deserts', with neither GP nor pharmacy services in the places that people live, work and shop.

On the other hand, a well designed hub and spoke model of provision, with neighbourhood pharmacies providing a range of access-critical services could very much enhance healthcare in localities across the country. The kind of pharmacy based services that could complement (and compensate for) more distant GP services are those that people need to access quickly (e.g. Emergency Hormonal Contraception), frequently (e.g. anti-coagulation monitoring and other routine point of care testing, with linked services such as supplementary prescribing) and those services for which a journey to a relatively distant location would be viewed as a considerable inconvenience (e.g. minor ailments).

The NPA suggests two ways that such access-critical services can be maintained close to home. First, that certain services, including an NHS minor ailments service, are commissioned in the national tiers of the community pharmacy contractual framework. Second, that PCTs' duty to consult in respect of a significant relocation of care such as a polyclinic development must include 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.

National Pharmacy Association