Pharmacy: Finance
(asked on 13th March 2017) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he made of the potential effect of reductions in community pharmacy funding on people (a) with legally protected characteristics and (b) living in the most deprived areas in England.
The Government believes efficiencies can be made within community pharmacy without compromising the quality of services or public access to them.
As part of community pharmacy reforms, we have introduced a Pharmacy Access Scheme (PhAS) to protect pharmacies in areas where there are fewer pharmacies and higher health needs, and no area need be left without access to a community pharmacy.
Our assessments included the consideration of the potential impacts on the adequate provision of National Health Service pharmaceutical services, including individuals with protected characteristics.
The table below shows how community pharmacy funding is expected to be distributed between deciles of the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD). It shows that a larger proportion of the funding was received by pharmacies in higher IMD deciles (i.e. more deprived areas) in 2015/16 and these proportions are expected to remain virtually unchanged in 2016/17 and 2017/18.
Index of Multiple Deprivation Decile | % of pharmacies in a cluster (three or more in a 10 minute walk) | Of 2015/16 funding, % received by each decile | Of 2016/17 funding, % received by each decile (after PhAS) | Of 2017/18 funding, % received by each decile (after PhAS) |
Most deprived - 1 | 59% | 17% | 17% | 17% |
2 | 54% | 14% | 14% | 14% |
3 | 49% | 13% | 13% | 13% |
4 | 47% | 11% | 11% | 11% |
5 | 37% | 10% | 10% | 10% |
6 | 37% | 9% | 9% | 9% |
7 | 30% | 7% | 7% | 7% |
8 | 26% | 7% | 7% | 7% |
9 | 20% | 7% | 7% | 7% |
Least deprived - 10 | 9% | 5% | 6% | 6% |