The Reform think tank today (March 25) published a report on the government’s planned Neighbourhood Health Service, suggesting that current strategies risk deprioritising pharmacies because they “tend to take a...GP-led approach”.
The service, which was first proposed in the Labour Party’s election manifesto in June, includes plans to “train thousands more GPs” – something Reform’s report suggests could be detrimental to pharmacies.
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“There is a risk that in scaling up general practice, the vision of a health system that is truly centred on and responsive to the needs of local communities and which provides services in recognisable neighbourhood and high street settings – such as community pharmacies... - could be deprioritised,” it said.
Healthcare industry insiders interviewed by the Westminster think tank told it that “current neighbourhood-level health strategies tend to be dominated by primary care networks (PCNs), which tend to take a top-down and GP-led approach”.
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This is “to the detriment of other primary care practitioners, such as dentists [and] pharmacists” as well as the “wealth of other organisations that contribute to population health at this level”, they said.
Reform thanked Boots for “providing insights to support this paper”, although it stressed that the chain had “no influence or involvement in the content, organisation or preparation of any activities related to the paper and Reform had full editorial control”.
“Longstanding challenges”
Interviewees also highlighted the issue that “in many parts of the health system, there are long-standing challenges around data controllership and how data is shared between organisations – particularly general practice and other providers of primary care like community pharmacy”.
And the report stressed that “while GPs currently have controllership of data, it is imperative that other partners within primary care can also use data to support and configure services”.
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Reform’s paper also said that at a neighbourhood scale, “some of the most important contributions to health are made by non-clinical parts of the workforce...including ‘community connector’ roles [and] link workers”.
It recommended making this healthcare workforce “better distributed across community settings where they are more accessible to patients – for example completing shifts in community pharmacies... - in addition to having a greater number of clinical roles co-located in PCNs”.
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CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison praised Reform’s report, saying that it “recognises the huge potential to harness community pharmacy to deliver effective ‘neighbourhood health’”.
“The community pharmacy network is ideally placed to improve health outcomes,” he said, adding that the sector can deliver the government’s planned shift from “treating sickness to preventing health” if backed by the “investment and support that it requires”.
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It comes after the Labour Party vowed to grant “more pharmacists independent prescribing rights where clinically appropriate” to ease “pressure” on GP surgeries in its June manifesto.
The manifesto – which included health as one of the party’s five “missions to rebuild Britain” - also promised to “shift resources to primary care and community services” as it set forth a vision of the NHS becoming a “Neighbourhood Health Service”.
But MP and pharmacist Sadik Al-Hassan this month said the promised community pharmacy prescribing service is “deliverable” but not ready yet – and could be “two or three years” away.
