Pharmacy Voice has welcomed the focus on joint working to improve patient care in a new consultation from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and National Association of Primary Care on integrating general practice and community pharmacy.

On the proposal that the contractual frameworks for community pharmacy and general practice need to be bound together in order to deliver better outcomes, Elizabeth Wade, director of policy, commented: “It has been clear for a long time that improving collaboration between GP surgeries and community pharmacies is important and that achieving better alignment of objectives and incentives is part of that. [However] it is time... to focus in a more practical way on how better collaboration and joint working will improve patient care.”

Pharmacy must avoid falling into the trap of seeing regulatory or structural change as the key that will unlock local integration, she warned. “Evidence suggests that changes to contracts and funding systems do not always produce the intended consequences, not least because these are only ever one part of the picture.

"Building relationships and overcoming professional barriers, training and developing staff, improving information for patients and the public, and developing a culture of continuous quality and value improvement are all just as important."

Closer working with general practice is part of this, but community pharmacy teams also need to work with colleagues across the whole system, from public health to acute care, she said.

“Innovative primary care leaders are already working together to do the right thing for patients, making best use of existing local commissioning arrangements and establishing new provider vehicles to enable collaboration. It is this type of practical partnership working we should all be focused on.”