Today I started listening to a Pharmacy Magazine Podcast , an ‘in conversation with…’ episode. The guest in this particular episode was Harry McQuillan – the CEO of Community Pharmacy Scotland. I have known of Harry for many years, and respect his thoughts and comments – I might not always agree with some of them, but they are always worthy of note. What piqued my interest in this conversation was the comment

Dispensing is important and it’s not enough

Harry McQuillan

Harry went on to expand on this, and to talk about a shift of focus from the ‘accuracy of dispensing’ to the ‘safety of dispensing’. As he said, we can have a dispensed item 100% accurate in terms of what was on a prescription, but was the prescription clinically appropriate and therefore a 100% safe for the patient. I can’t do justice to the discussion here, so go and listen to the podcast – it is a good use of time.

Pharmacy Magazine Podcast

But the ‘dispensing is not enough’ position has been held by the profession for a while now, we all know we can do more to support patients, and to help with the workload of the wider health economy. It certainly seems to be the aspiration of the government for pharmacy to contribute to and undertake more clinical services, although the path it has chosen to effect this could be seen as cynical. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again …

The current dispensing activities of community pharmacy have incorrectly and perhaps maliciously been seen as solely “distribution of product”.

So the underfunding of community pharmacy has led to recruitment, capacity and stability issues in the network. The fact that some of the larger multiples are walking away from the pharmacy contract (Lloyds and Tesco) should be ringing alarm bells in the corridors of power. It has to a certain degree, as the change to the Pharmacy Regulations has permitted the 100 hr pharmacies to reduce their core hours down to 75. The obvious concern was that extended hours provision would collapse, and that would be a political disaster, as patients would be impacted – but no such relief was offered to the 40 hour contractors. Why? Because the simple fact seems to be that the NHS is out of cash, and I’m afraid we are a significant way down the ‘pecking order’ for attention.

So how do we ‘ square the circle ‘ of increasing volumes of prescriptions, decreasing network capacity whilst increasing service delivery?

If you have the answer, there’s a lot of pharmacy teams who would listen to your thoughts.