Pharmacy Voice has made significant progress in raising the profession’s profile in primary care, the group said in its annual review.

Its Dispensing Health campaign, which won a SMART award for Best Public Awareness Initiative at last month’s awards, created over 14.5million opportunities to be seen and contributed to an 18 per cent rise in public awareness of pharmacy services last year. Pharmacy Voice chief executive Rob Darracott told ICP that the group was considering a local element for the campaign.

National IT lead John Palmer and the IT working group resolved 12 issues with EPS and were addressing many more. “There was some concern among our members that desirable advances were being lost in order to deliver what the NHS wanted.” Changes at the Health and Social Care Information Centre meant that it was working more collaboratively.

Pharmacy Voice had made more progress than expected in the area of safety, while the demise of NHS Direct and changes at NHS 111 had created opportunities for pharmacy. And the fact that the Pharmacy and Public Health Forum is formally part of PHE advisory machinery could prove “quite exciting”.

Prescription direction remained an issue and Pharmacy Voice had made plenty of suggestions for tackling the problem. But the authorities wanted to “take one step at a time”. Medicines shortages continued to cause problems for pharmacists and took their focus away from patient care. “Pharmacy teams are managing it week by week but it’s not going away.”