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Pharmacy White Paper
The Government published its long awaited White Paper on pharmacy - Pharmacy in England - Building on Strengths, Delivering the Future on 3rd April 2008.
The White Paper can be downloaded here.
It contains a great many proposals to expand the role of community pharmacy. Work to implement proposals begins immediately, with NHS Employers acting on behalf of Primary Care Trusts, and PSNC discussing a number of key issues. The community pharmacy contractual framework will be refreshed over the next two years, as new services are developed.
PSNC has prepared a briefing paper setting out the key themes and action points, together with proposed time-lines in the White Paper. The briefing can be accessed in the pharmacy contract section of this site.
PSNC comment
Sue Sharpe, Chief Executive Officer, PSNC, commented on the publication of the pharmacy White Paper:
"I am delighted that the White Paper proposes implementation of a wide range of community pharmacy based services that will offer people easy access to help them stay healthy, and extend the part community pharmacists play in the care of people with acute and long term conditions."
It builds on the NHS contractual framework, identifying the barriers to developing our role and proposing practical and constructive measures for tackling them. The White Paper includes many innovative proposals and PSNC will look forward to working with the government, NHS Employers and others to deliver the benefits we can bring to the NHS as soon as possible. This is a really positive White Paper for community pharmacy.
Focussing on the detail of the White Paper she continued:
"The new community services proposed include all PSNC's priority areas for service development: minor ailments; support for people with long term conditions; vascular risk assessment and healthy living services including sexual health and smoking cessation. In addition there are innovations, such as the proposals for supporting patients with newly prescribed medicines for long term conditions and those taking oral chemotherapy.
We have been seeking an extension of emergency supply legislation to permit pharmacies to supply a full 28 day course of treatment. This would support far greater use of pharmacy for urgent care, so we are pleased that the White Paper commits to considering this.
The White Paper identifies many enablers that can address current problems. They include proposals to improve partnership working with GPs, using IT to capture public health interventions, improving commissioning and providing powers to deal with unacceptable levels of performance.
We will look forward to working with a "Czar" who understands community pharmacy, and to continuing our close involvement with the Chief Pharmacist's Public Health Leadership Forum. PSNC already works closely with the Head of Pharmacy at the Department of Health and her team and NHS Employers. We have a large programme of work to undertake with them and other organisations to ensure that the goals of the White Paper are fully met.
Of course pharmacy contractors need to be confident that investment will be properly rewarded. The White Paper recognises that contractors have not seen the fruits of their investment from PCT commissioning and we will be reviewing the funding mechanisms to ensure that they target fair funding to reflect service provision and service quality. With the right motivation, I believe there will be great interest in developing pharmacy staff into health trainers.
On Control of Entry, and the proposals to amend the 100 hour exemption, PSNC will consider the options when it next meets, but we are pleased that the government has recognised that there is a need for this to be revised.
On dispensing doctors, we are happy to engage in a further examination of the dispensing doctor exemption to see if there are improvements that can be made to meet the needs of patients in rural areas who have real difficulties in getting services from a pharmacy, whilst ensuring that where patients can obtain pharmacy services without difficulty they do so. The current arrangements were developed in collaboration with dispensing doctor representatives and we will seek to protect our collaborative relations with them.
On appliance contractors, we will look into this closely. Every pharmacy dispenses some appliances, and we need to ensure this is recognised.
We will look forward to working with the government and NHS Employers to revise the framework to ensure that we move forward as quickly as possible to implement the changes that will introduce effective quality measures and properly reward investment"
Media coverage
On Tuesday 2nd April the Daily Telegraph highlighted the forthcoming publication of the White Paper.
There was also extensive coverage of the White Paper on the BBC News website.
Sue Sharpe spoke to BBC Radio 4's Today Programme on the morning of 4th April; Click here to listen again.
PSNC has issued two press releases on the White Paper - one to the national media and one to the trade press. Click on the links below to download these documents.
Pharmacy White Paper - general press release
Pharmacy White Paper - trade press release
Posted 20 April 2008