Growing up, I was regularly tasked by my mum to walk down to our local Selles pharmacy to pick up large packs of medicines and supplies for my sister. She was born with a degenerative (and terminal) genetic condition, meaning she relied on a vast supply of medicines and products throughout her short life.
Every week, millions of people do the same, either for themselves or their family members. Community Pharmacy has played a central role in the healthcare and wellbeing of our communities for many generations. But often, people don’t stop to think about the role that pharmacy teams play, their value, and their potential.
I admit I was probably one of those people until I started working for McKesson UK, then-owners of Lloydspharmacy, in 2019.
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Part of my role on the board of the company was to help the whole sector to play a bigger role in communicating the success of pharmacy, and the potential for everyone to do more, in order to move the sector away from the recent years of cuts.
The Covid-19 pandemic hit within months of me starting. I was still getting my head around the vast detail and intricacies of community pharmacy and funding.
I was instantly blown away by the dedication of pharmacy teams in keeping the front doors open, so that patients could still access medicines and healthcare advice - the only part of the primary care sector to do so at scale.
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The ability to be flexible in the service of patients was evident everywhere. Delivery services were stood up to get medicines to shielding patients, pharmacy teams worked with local volunteer networks, millions of Covid tests and vaccinations were delivered.
All while the pandemic raged and pharmacy teams had their own families to think of too. At the centre, we worked with government to change regulations so that we could keep the doors open, and all our teams were able to travel. We worked hard to get the best deal for pharmacy teams and for the sector on new services, later we showcased the work we had undertaken.
When I was elected this year, I was determined to bring some of my experience to bear to make the case for community pharmacy within Parliament, and Government.
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I’m now Chair of the cross-party group on Community Pharmacy, alongside my Labour colleague Sadik Al-Hasan, himself a pharmacist, Lord Scriven, a Liberal Democrat, and Baroness Cumberlege, a Conservative. It’s our job to help the sector to communicate the success of community pharmacy within Parliament, and to support a wider group of colleagues with information and expertise on the sector, enabling them to fight for their own community pharmacies.
When he became Health Secretary in July, one of the first things Wes Streeting did was to commission Lord Darzi to deliver a report on the current state of the NHS. Darzi’s report referenced the huge potential of the community pharmacy sector, and acknowledged the serious challenges facing it.
Darzi also talked about the need to move healthcare back into communities, and to move our national healthcare system away from a treatment-based approach to a prevention-based service. This community- and prevention-based healthcare approach is the future for the NHS, and pharmacy is central to it.
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While dispensing medicines and over-the-counter treatments will always remain at the core of a pharmacy’s work, we know there is more you have the potential to deliver. From case-finding to conditions management and medicines optimisation, to more vaccination programmes and healthcare advice, pharmacy is ideally placed to deliver on the government’s agenda to improve the health of the nation.
Maintaining a sufficiently-funded community service is vital to ensuring people are able to live happy and healthy lives. Without community pharmacy, people and communities would be more unhealthy, poorer, and would place ever more work on GPs and hospitals. Pharmacy has an historic opportunity to meet the potential they represent by working with government to deliver more - and should rightly want to be reimbursed sustainably for that work. As MPs on the Pharmacy group, we’ll be right alongside you making that case too.
Steve Race is the Labour MP for Exeter, and will chair the reconstituted All-Party Parliamentary Group on pharmacy
