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Record learning outcomes

Trawling back through the stories we have covered involving the world’s largest quango feels more like a roll call of shame than a recollection of past events.

And how regrettable that is, given NHS England was launched to great fanfare in 2013 as part of arguably the biggest reform of the health service in history. As far as community pharmacy is concerned, it’s been not so much a force, more a farce.

It would be remiss of me to suggest NHSE has been a complete failure, although I’m struggling to think of any great successes. Even the hotly anticipated launch of Pharmacy First fell flat and steadily got worse. It says much that patients still don’t know what it is or have never heard of it.

The service started in January 2024. By November, a National Pharmacy Association survey revealed over a third of the public were “unaware” of it. And let’s not forget the IT chaos that hampered pharmacies trying to complete consultations.

Then there’s independent prescribing pathfinder sites. They were supposed to launch in January 2023 but were held up by funding and implementation issues. The first site went live in December 2024.

Pharmacists are the experts in medicines, right? Nobody in the NHS knows better than them how drugs interact with the body, how they can be a risk as well as a benefit. Is this public knowledge? I don’t recall a nationwide PR campaign.

I don’t remember NHSE revoking the contracts of distance-selling pharmacies that broke the regulations by failing to provide services nationally.

I remember NHSE’s ‘Help Us Help You’ campaign to get people to go to pharmacies for advice on minor conditions without considering the pressures pharmacy teams were under.

Who can forget the additional roles reimbursement scheme and its impact on community pharmacy’s workforce? Did NHSE conduct a study to prove its recruitment of pharmacists into GP practices made the most of their skills and provided value for money?

Did NHSE ensure there were enough designated prescribing practitioners? Did it publish the economic analysis of community pharmacy? And on it goes.

Neil Trainis is the editor of Independent Community Pharmacist.