PSNC chief executive Janet Morrison has said that the government needs to properly fund dispensing and operational costs in order for pharmacies to deliver clinical services.
Speaking at The Pharmacy Show on Sunday, Ms Morrison highlighted the importance of dispensing, but said: ‘My perception is overall government doesn't really want to pay for that.
‘But anytime there's a crisis, suddenly they get very alarmed if people can't get their vital medicines, carers and families are in distress and get very frightened and the government don't like that.
‘So I think we have to build a better understanding of the fundamental link between the value of that dispensing relationship, and that's where you build on the clinical services.’
She also said that PSNC needed to ‘make sure that they really are understanding the sustainability of how you operate a community pharmacy business’.
Ms Morrison added that ‘our worst nightmare’ would be a contract with ‘slivers of services’, ‘none of which really deliver the groundswell of an operationally effective operation for a community pharmacy’.
And NHS Business Service Authority figures published last week showed that community pharmacies in England are dispensing more prescription items and delivering more clinical services, despite this year seeing the lowest number of contractors since 2015.
Also at the Pharmacy Show, Ian Strachan, owner and superintendent of Strachan’s Chemists, said that community pharmacies ‘can’t do services without some headroom’.
He explained: ‘We need some headroom in the contract to prepare and to plan for services. Services don't just happen. There has to be a long term commitment to them, they have to be delivered properly. We can't do that right now. We're firefighting. It's a constant chase.’
He said that many contractors were using their advance payments from October to pay off debts from September, rather than preparing for the next month. ‘That's the situation a lot of contractors are in: we're building up debt. It's not working,’ he said.
He added that pharmacy was ‘the right thing’ to deliver services such as smoking cessation, ‘but there has to be a political change and a financial change to support it.’
He said: ‘If I was a leader now in this sector, I'd still be driving for more funding for the network and to retain the network and if anything, I’d have more pharmacies, not less.’
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘We have committed more than £2.5bn of funding each year to the sector, including for dispensing and operational costs, in a deal agreed with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee.
‘In September we announced some further services that will be delivered in community pharmacy during the remainder of the deal, as well as an additional £100 million investment.
‘Funding after the deal will be subject to negotiations with the Committee.’
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