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My Month, January 2015

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My Month, January 2015

As part of a busy month, independent contractor Dilip Joshi visits the Society to talk about making the Faculty more relevant to community pharmacy and ends up being persuaded to apply for membership himself

Monday November 3

I am attending a Lambeth Prescribing Committee meeting today in which the main discussion topic is GP targets. Points of contention included evidence-based decision making. I leave the meeting feeling almost sympathetic for our GP colleagues and realise that, despite high-level positive messages, morale in the National Health Service is very low at the coalface among commissioners and providers alike. I wonder how sustainable the cost-cutting model is and how long before we have yet another complete overhaul of the NHS.

Tuesday November 4

I am at an event celebrating training and education in pharmacy teams across South London at the Kia Oval. Among those present are Ash Soni (RPS president), Gul Root (principal pharmaceutical officer, Department of Health), Vanessa Kingsbury (managing director, Buttercups Training), Professor Richard Parish (chairman, Pharmacy and Public Health Forum) and Dr James Kingsland (president of the National Association of Primary Care). Earl Howe, a long-standing supporter of Healthy Living Pharmacies, gives the keynote address. He praises the contribution pharmacy makes to healthcare and, in paying glowing tributes to the work pharmacists and their health champions in South London have carried out, calls for even greater responsibility to be given to pharmacy teams in the future. I reflect with pride that the achievements we are celebrating this evening started through an ambitious joint bid between my LPC and Lambeth PCT. Our model, which includes leadership training for pharmacists as well as Royal Society for Public Health accredited training for ‘health champions’, has been emulated throughout South London. Several health champions are announced as award winners for achieving high stop-smoking interventions and excellence in other services but, as the evening draws to a close, it is clear that all are winners and the profile of community pharmacy has been raised.

Wednesday November 5

I am meeting Lesley Johnson, lead for the RPS Faculty, at the Society today. We discuss how the Faculty could be more relevant to community pharmacy. I say that some of the research-based elements are more suited to hospital and academic pharmacists and that there needs to be more direct relevance to the day-to-day practice of community pharmacists.

We also discuss how CPD could be improved and whether the Faculty could be a suitable replacement. This is for the future, but before I leave, I am persuaded by Lesley that I should experience the joys of making a submission for the Faculty myself and I agree without realising the amount of extra work I’ve let myself in for!

Thursday November 6

Care Quality Commission (CQC) representatives are present at our LPC meeting this evening. One is a manager we have previously worked with as head of public engagement at Lewisham CCG. She explains that the CQC inspects health and social care services and it is seeking the committee’s feedback on a proposed pilot for SE London pharmacies to help raise awareness. We are asked to give out leaflets and other literature in our pharmacies; however, the presentation makes reference to taking ‘tougher’ action and targeting GP surgeries and the committee is uncertain whether this would be in the best interests of maintaining good relations with our GP colleagues. We are reluctant to commit until there is better understanding of CQC proposals.

Thursday November 13

As a board member, I host an NPA ‘Your Voice’ event at the Croydon Hilton. These events – where a small focus group of independent community pharmacy owners gather for open discussion – are being held throughout the country. Some key areas of concern include: the electronic prescription service (“get it right or stop it”), prescription direction (especially with EPS), properly remunerated services (whether locally commissioned or part of the core contract), reducing quota barriers to obtaining medicines supplies, having contractual arrangements that reflect the fact that financial risk cannot be spread across a large estate for smaller independents, inclusive CCG governance (so that pharmacists are in a position to contribute and GPs are not conflicted), a reimbursement system which gives pharmacists the ability to verify accuracy of their payments, read and write access to care records, and reform of the law around dispensing errors.

Thursday November 27

I am at a Pharmacy London meeting today and we have a new chair and vice-chair – Raj Matharu and Mayank Patel, respectively – who take office from January 1. Both have already made significant contributions, in particular, as members of the flu team that negotiated the London-wide service. Two notable topics of discussion today are a PSNC service for contractors to check their
pricing authority (PA) statements and a new Pharmacy Urgent Repeat Medicines (PURM) pilot service. PSNC is to launch a subscription service that allows contractors to monitor their PA payments through key performance indicators.

I’m not convinced that a subscription service is appropriate as the data is derived from the PA rather than independently and the American acronym GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) comes to mind; in other words there is no independent check of the quality of PA data. The PURM service is for emergency supply of repeat medicines and is only available through NHS111 referral. The pilot is to run across London from December 1, 2014 to April 7, 2015 and aims to facilitate access to patients’ regular prescription medicines out of hours. A service levy of £10 will be paid for up to two drugs and additional items will be £2 each plus the cost of the drugs at Drug Tariff prices. Will it last beyond April 2015, I wonder.

 

 

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