Their intentions have been spot on but maybe community pharmacy’s tub-thumpers have got the execution wrong.

A range of pharmacy bodies in England (I won’t list them but you know who they are) have tried to impress upon the Conservatives over the last 14 years, even more so since that December 17, 2015 government letter, the importance of funding community pharmacy properly and fixing a host of other issues.

‘Pharmacies will close! The network will collapse!’ campaigners have cried, producing sobering figures for closures and staff at risk of burnout. There have been countless reports, a petition delivered to Downing Street and High Court action.

With great justification, the tub-thumpers have warned hard-up pharmacies are reducing their hours and services and patients are suffering. And then it hit me. It’s one thing to scream ‘save our pharmacies’ and ‘patients will suffer’ and hope the message penetrates, it’s another thing entirely to prove the latter with hard evidence and lots of it. 

I’m playing devil’s advocate but why would the government feel compelled to increase pharmacy’s global sum just because pharmacy leaders are bombarding it with strongly worded rhetoric? And two more questions; does the government care pharmacies have closed and will continue to close? Have warnings from pharmacy bodies that patients will suffer done the trick? I would argue no to both.

Surely, though, the government would take notice if presented with a large-scale study, say England-wide, complete with patient testimonies from towns and cities up and down the country, laying out in explicit terms how their health has suffered as a direct result of pharmacies closing or reducing their services because of poor funding. 

If a patient died because they were unable to get their heart medication after their pharmacy had closed, such a report might also contain testimony from a coroner. That funding-pharmacy closure-patient harm link would be impossible to dismiss.

I’d like to see a pharmacy body team up with an entity that has access to patients across England (the Patients’ Association springs to mind) and produce a report brimming with those testimonies.

To governments of any political persuasion, loud noise is just loud noise. Evidence is everything.

Neil Trainis is the editor of Independent Community Pharmacist.