Community pharmacies could be NHS ’third tier’

At the 2013 UCL School of Pharmacy annual lecture, Sue Sharpe, the Chief Executive of the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC), presented a blue-print for community pharmacies to serve as a 'third tier' in the NHS, alongside GP practices and hospitals. During her lecture, entitled From Making Medicines to Optimising Health - Pharmacists in the 21st Century , she suggested that innovations like Healthy Living Pharmacies can provide better and more affordable care in areas ranging from the prevention and early detection of obesity and smoking related problems such as cancers, strokes and heart disease through to ensuring good treatment for people with raised blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and some emergency needs. She called on Ministers and new health service bodies such as the NHS Commissioning Board to champion ways of enabling community pharmacists to contribute more to the economic provision of well integrated, easy-to-access health services for people at all stages of life. "The primary care progress the NHS needs to survive through the next decade of austerity can only happen through strong partnerships between community pharmacists and professionals like GPs, community nurses and social care providers. Building on the good relationships that already exist between doctors and pharmacists is vital, although when patient and public interests can be better served by extending service users' choices or closer working across traditional boundaries we should not be afraid of radical change.