Community Pharmacy in 2016-17 and Beyond

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

The point about the pharmacy integration fund is that we want to think up more joined-up ways in which we bring everything together. That is why we very much focus on the deployment of clinical pharmacies and pharmacy services in the community and primary care settings. It will include groups of general practices, but it also includes care homes and urgent care settings, such as NHS 111.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for repeating the Statement. She has rightly highlighted that over recent years the number of community pharmacies has increased—indeed, by more than 1,000 pharmacies in the last five years. That is welcome, because it is a means by which there is a reach into the community that is unparalleled elsewhere in the health and care services. But it is about how we go about diversifying pharmacy income. For a long time, it has been clear that it should not be wholly reliant on dispensing fees and the global sum, as it has been in the past. We need additional services, enhanced and locally commissioned services, to grow. My noble friend’s Statement said exactly that, but the question is how we do it. By and large, it will not be done out of the public health budget of local authorities, although some will be. It is potentially mainly out of things such as the better care fund, enabling us not just to have pharmacies embedded in GP and other health services but using the community pharmacies’ reach in the community to deliver support to people with chronic conditions. Will my noble friend say that there will be an effort to promote this? At the moment, we have no good data from the past two years on local commissioning of those enhanced services. Can we get those data sorted out so that we can see whether pharmacies are being used as they should be and diversifying their income?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I agree with everything that my noble friend has said—data are extremely important. Of course, with those new reforms we will have the opportunity to make changes and be absolutely sure that the integrated services are working as we want them to work.