Patients affected by pharmacies participating in collective action should access pharmacy services via distance pharmacies “through online contact, by telephone call or by other means”, health minister Baroness Merron last week (March 20) advised.
The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) last week urged its 6,000 member pharmacies in England “to start the process from April 1 of reducing opening hours and services, if no new and sufficient funding is delivered” as part of historic collective action.
Two days later, the Bishop of St Albans asked Merron in the House of Lords “what assessment [the government] has made of the impact of the potential reduction in pharmacy opening hours”.
Read more: Collective action! Pharmacies to cut hours and services from April 1
“Core hours of either 40 or 72 hours would not be affected by the proposed action by one trade body,” she answered.
“Options are available to patients to access alternative pharmacies or distance-selling pharmacies (DSPs),” she added.
Drone deliveries?
“Patients are also more open to ideas of online consultation,” shadow health minister Lord Kamall told the Lords, pointing to Royal Mail trials of “delivery by drones in remote areas”.
“There is a whole host of things happening in other sectors that the pharmacy sector and other parts of our health and care sector can learn from,” he said.
And he added that “some chains…have in-store pharmacies”, asking “what thought has been given to more of these partnerships—and also, perhaps, pharmacies as part of future primary healthcare centres”.
Read more: Pharmacist MPs and minister vote down NICs hike exemption
“While many people may want a bricks and mortar pharmacy, those who use the NHS app, for example, may be happy to order repeat prescriptions and have them delivered or pick them up from a local location”, he said.
Calling Kamall’s comments “very constructive”, Merron said that the government is “exploring how pharmacy can best be positioned—and indeed levered—to fit [its] ambition for a neighbourhood health service within the NHS 10-year plan”.
“More will be heard about that soon,” she added.
“Private businesses”
Merron also said that “one of the challenges that community pharmacies raised with us is about funding”, which she said had faced cuts of “some 28%”.
“That is why we have concluded the consultation about funding - we will shortly announce the outcome, looking at how these private businesses can operate in the market,” she added.
“We are keen to ensure that [community pharmacies] play their part and continue to work very constructively with them,” she said.
Read more: NHSE refuses to publish pharmacy economic review before contract
“We will conclude matters shortly and look forward to making the decision about future funding known ASAP,” she told the Lords, adding that the announcement will cover “a funding settlement for the years 2024/25 and 2025/26”.
It comes as the pharmacy minister and pharmacist MPs Sadik Al-Hassan and Taiwo Owatemi all voted against exempting pharmacies from the upcoming national insurance hike last week.
Read more: ‘Collective voice’: IPA and NPA pen joint letter over economic review
Meanwhile, NHS England (NHSE) last week confirmed that both the government and pharmacy negotiators have seen the long-awaited economic analysis of the sector, which sector leaders demanded it publish “immediately”.
But NHSE said at the time that it has “agreed with Community Pharmacy England (CPE) not to comment publicly on anything related to the uplift or funding arrangements for the sector given [the bodies] remain in consultation”.
The review, which officials said would “inform any future decision on the funding of community pharmacies”, was first announced in 2022 but had still not begun in February last year.
