Expert panel says government behind on improving pharmacy services

The panel, whose members include former Healthwatch England chair Sir Robert Francis QC, undertook an evaluation for the parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee (HSCC).

Overall, it found:

• Progress by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on nine key commitments for pharmacy services, ‘requires improvement’

• In particular, the DHSC was unlikely to meet its aim to end paper prescriptions and introduce digital prescribing across all services by 2024

• The government was behind on legislation to support more skill mix, such as pharmacy technicians, within teams

• Community pharmacies were struggling to cope with increased demand for their services within existing budgets or even to remain open, as some larger chemist chains announced closures.

Findings from the panel included a lot of evidence from named integrated care boards about local challenges as well as stakeholder roundtables, which some local Healthwatch might find worth looking up. Some of the key points from that evidence that jumped out to the Healthwatch England policy team, include:

• variability on whether GPs and urgent and emergency care services were referring patients for consultations with pharmacists, and also the unintended consequence of such referrals for people who might not be able to afford over-the-counter medications recommended during these consultations, when they might have hoped to get a GP prescription for that item, especially if they were exempt from NHS prescription charges

• the difference between hospital trusts in adopting digital prescribing, so they could, for example, deal with inpatients’ usual medication needs quickly

• IT barriers between NHS and social care services to manage home care users' medication needs

• the warning from some stakeholders that digital prescribing is not appropriate for certain patients who are not 'digitally enabled’.

The panel’s findings will inform the HSCC’s ongoing inquiry into pharmacy services, to which Healthwatch England has submitted evidence. We expect findings from that inquiry to come out later this year.

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