Home PSNC Plan and Vision
PSNC has established its vision and work programme for 2012 and has set out how these plans fit into a 4 year programme of activity leading up to 2016. The plans, which have been in formulation for a number of months, were ratified by committee members at PSNC’s January 20122 Committee meeting.
As the national representative body for NHS pharmacy in England, PSNC has developed the plans with a mind to enabling community pharmacies to offer an increased range of high quality and fully funded services; services that meet the needs of their local communities, provide good health outcomes for patients, and deliver excellent value for the NHS.
At the heart of the plans is a focus on supporting and empowering LPCs to act as a strong voice for pharmacy at a local level; matching the ongoing power shift from central to local decision making across the health service.
With this focus in mind, PSNC’s principal objectives in 2012 are:
- To further strengthen the foundations for future growth of community pharmacy services in line with government policy following the introduction of the 2011 service changes.
- To secure full and fair funding based on the evidence of the Cost of Service inquiry, negotiate acceptable revisions to funding distribution, and continue to secure improvements to pricing accuracy through effective audit and negotiation.
- To ensure that developments in technology support the community pharmacy service.
- To work to provide a regulatory framework that meets contractor needs.
- To provide information, advice and support to contractors and LPCs, and build alliances within and outside pharmacy to promote pharmacy’s interests.
This work will be undertaken as part of PSNC’s four year strategy for the development of the NHS community pharmacy service. This strategy is built around a clear vision for the community pharmacy service in 2016:
Our aims and aspirations for the NHS community pharmacy service: the community pharmacy service in 2016 will offer support to our communities, helping people to optimise use of medicines to support their health and care for acute and long-term conditions, and providing individualised information, advice and assistance to support the public’s health and healthy living.
- All pharmacies will provide a cost-effective and high quality range of services to their patients, encouraged by funding arrangements that motivate service provision, reward positive patient outcomes and offer sustainability to contractors. The value of pharmacy services to patients and the NHS and the wider savings which can be created by the effective use of pharmacy will be evidenced.
- Pharmacies will be fully integrated into provision of primary care and public health services, and will have a substantial and acknowledged role in the delivery of accessible care at the heart of their community.
- Pharmacies will be able to deliver a wide range of NHS services to support their customers and patients, and be able to offer them services on equal terms to other primary care providers.
- Patients will be confident that when they access services from a pharmacy, the pharmacist and other members of the pharmacy team will have the skills and resources necessary to deliver high quality services. Effective communications will ensure seamless integration with other NHS care providers.
- In some cases arrangements for provision of pharmacy services may include patient registration. All patients will have a free and unfettered choice of pharmacy.