Pharmacy bodies hold ‘productive’ meeting with minister ahead of contract negotiations

The pharmacy minister has been urged to close a £2.6bn funding gap facing community pharmacy during a meeting with sector leaders ahead of the next round of contract negotiations.

Senior representatives from the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA), National Pharmacy Association (NPA) and the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) joined forces on Tuesday to set out their key asks of the government in a meeting with Stephen Kinnock and Department of Health and Social Care officials.

They said the aim was to show a ‘united positive and realistic front’ while laying out the ‘immense pressure’ within the sector and the urgent need for action.

Importantly, the bodies pressed for the need to close the £2.6bn funding gap – identified in the NHS commissioned Independent Economic Analysis – between the costs of running a pharmacy and funding received from the NHS.

The minister was told that with ‘the right support’ pharmacies would be able to help the government achieve its 10-year health plan ambitions, and provide an expanded range of services and help shift care into the community.

Pharmacies are well placed to deliver more vaccinations through the NHS and to provide an increasing role in prevention, including through weight loss management, Mr Kinnock was told.

The bodies also reiterated the need to introduce prescribing opportunities for community pharmacists, ‘or risk seeing these valuable skills leave’ the sector.

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Chief executive of the NPA, Henry Gregg, said: ‘It was really important today that we joined together as a sector so could deliver the same message, loud and clear to government ministers.

‘Pharmacies have enormous potential to provide a wider range of services to their patients than ever before, delivering massive benefits to the whole health system and helping ministers to achieve the 10-year plan.

‘However, this cannot happen whilst pharmacies have been closing in record numbers and those that have kept their doors open have done so by going to extraordinary and unsustainable lengths.’

Mr Gregg said that while the bodies told the government ‘we’re up for working with them to deliver new services’, this can only be done with ‘a sustainable funding package that closes the funding gap identified by the NHS’s own analysis’.

Chief executive of the IPA, Dr Leyla Hannbeck, thanked the minister and his team for what she described as a ‘productive meeting’.

She said the IPA had discussed with the minister its call for ‘invest to save’ in community pharmacy, ‘by reinvesting back into our sector the savings that community pharmacies make through their incentivised procurement’.

‘This does not require new money from the NHS and will provide community pharmacies with the financial boost they desperately need,’ said Dr Hannbeck.

‘We also discussed the savings that the NHS would make by allowing more vaccinations through community pharmacies.

‘Prevention, weight loss management are all prudent investments offering not only value for money but improved patient outcomes.’

But she reiterated that the ‘liquidity of pharmacies everywhere must be stabilised before the innovation can truly start’.

‘A further outcome we wanted from this meeting with the minister was to ensure a united positive and realistic front from pharmacy bodies and we have achieved that,’ said Dr Hannbeck.

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‘We look forward to continuous dialogue with minister Kinnock and his team and we are encouraged by the fact that he is listening.’

Chief executive of the CCA, Malcolm Harrison, added that he was ‘delighted to join forces with fellow our trade associations to meet with the minister’.

‘We are steadfast in our collective belief that community pharmacy has a crucial role to play in delivering the government’s 10-Year Plan for the NHS,’ he said.

But he stressed the need for ‘investment to close the gap between the cost of providing NHS pharmaceutical care and what the NHS currently pays’.

‘For pharmacies to be able to deliver more quality clinical care, and provide additional capacity in NHS primary care, the foundations must be fixed,’ said Mr Harrison.

The meeting comes ahead of the expected start of pharmacy contract negotiations – which had originally planned to begin in September.

And it was attended by Mr Harrison of the CCA, Mr Gregg of the NPA, Ian Strachan of the IPA and chair of the NPA Olivier Picard.

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At the Pharmacy Show earlier this month, chief executive of Community Pharmacy England (CPE) Janet Morrison said pharmacy leaders should prepare for ‘hard choices’ during contract negotiations after the government warned of a constrained budget.

Ms Morrison said she had recently spoken with the pharmacy minister who warned about ‘the gloomy outlook’ ahead of the next negotiations.

Today marks the beginning of two expansions in community pharmacy – including the provision of emergency contraception on the NHS through pharmacies and the addition of antidepressants to the New Medicine Service.

And last week, new NHS England planning guidance suggested it will ‘maximise’ the role of community pharmacy by embedding ‘pharmacy-first’ approaches and introducing prescribing-based services.