Government must urgently reform the funding framework for
community pharmacy if more clinical services are to be delivered
and increasing demands for medication are to be met.
The Committee's report finds the current Community Pharmacy
Funding Framework not fit for purpose and urges an overhaul to
reduce its complexity. A new framework is necessary to deliver
adequate funding and prevent damaging cross-subsidy between
clinical services and prescription dispensing as is currently the
case. Reductions in core funding to community services of 30%
since 2015 equates to an annual shortfall, per pharmacy, of
between £67,000 and £100,000. Meanwhile, 1,100 pharmacies have
closed in that time, more than a third of which were serving the
most deprived areas.
MPs call for government to address medicine shortages which, they
warn, risk undermining flagship initiatives such as ‘Pharmacy
First' by eroding public confidence in pharmacists. The report
calls for an independent review of the medicines supply chain to
identify the weak links and to determine how the UK's response to
shortages can be improved. Among solutions already recommended is
regulatory change to allow pharmacists to dispense alternatives
without sending patients back to GPs for new paperwork.
The report concludes that community pharmacy has vast amounts of
untapped potential and additional services could be delivered
within community pharmacy settings. It urges government and NHS
England to set an explicit expectation that community pharmacies
offer additional services, for example access to HIV prevention
medication and all routine and seasonal immunisation for adults
and children.
