Five tips to manage medicines shortages

Two recent reports offer practical insight into how pharmacists can better manage medicines shortages – and what needs to happen at a system level to support them. Jerome Smail lists five tips

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Medicines Shortages: Solutions for Empty Shelves – One Year On reviews progress against the 20 recommendations set out in its original December 2024 report.

Meanwhile, a blog post by Ross Maclagan, head of supply and distribution policy at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), responds to both the RPS report and a House of Lords Public Services Committee inquiry into medicines security, arguing the case for proactive resilience planning over reactive shortage management.

Together, the two documents identify several areas where pharmacists can take practical action.

1.Make use of the medicines supply tool

The RPS report notes that awareness of the Specialist Pharmacy Service's medicines supply tool among community pharmacists is increasing, and that work has continued in enabling pharmacists to access the tool via GP prescribing systems, reducing the friction of separate registrations and logins.

2. Develop local pathways

The RPS report highlights one integrated care board where community pharmacies developed electronic pathways to flag shortages directly to their practices – a model that has the potential to be replicated to improve cross-sector coordination.

3. Know your cross-sector options

For life-critical medicines, cross-sector protocols can provide a safety net.

For example, the RPS report cites a scheme in Hampshire and Isle of Wight where the NHS Oxford Pharmacy Store holds a buffer stock of unlicensed imports of pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy (PERT), enabling next-day delivery to community pharmacies when normal supply channels cannot meet urgent demand.

4. Engage with the wider system

Mr Maclagan argues that lasting improvement depends on better collaboration and data sharing across the whole supply chain.

While this is a challenge for the pharmacy industry as a whole rather than individual pharmacists, he points to a recent HRT roundtable, convened by the Department of Health and Social Care, where manufacturers were brought together to understand NHS demand, leading to improved availability of HRT medicines.

5. Be proactive

The RPS report is clear that the burden on pharmacists remains unsustainably high, and it warns that managing shortages risks pulling pharmacy resource away from patient-facing roles.

The ABPI acknowledges that resilience cannot be built through simplistic solutions, and that the system as a whole must move from reactive management to proactive planning.

For pharmacists, the message is that practical tools and local partnerships exist, but systemic change is still needed to reduce the pressure they face.