The NPA has released its ‘Face to face’ report and would like to hear pharmacists’ views.

By NPA head of communications, Stephen Fishwick.

Our ’face to face’ report is about the importance of local access and the human touch in healthcare. A number of policy and practice implications arise from this report, so we’d like to invite Pharmacy Magazine readers to give their views.

Questions the report covers include:

How can technology be used to supplement or enhance, rather than diminish, face-to-face care and locally based services?
An example of where technology is being used appropriately – increasing the time available for direct patient contact – is the use of robotic dispensing in some pharmacies. Will Chemists in Inverurie, Scotland, reports that the use of a robot to dispense repeat prescriptions and manage certain back-office functions has “increased the time to look after our most important asset, our customers and patients”.

Should referrals to and from community pharmacies into other parts of the health and social care system be more formalised and standardised?
As several examples in the report show, there are many direct referrals from community pharmacies to general practice, hospitals and social care. These could potentially benefit from a degree of formalisation and standardisation, as a way of integrating care and establishing a common understanding about what to expect – among patients, healthcare professionals and NHS managers.

Could more professional autonomy for pharmacists make face-to-face care more convenient for patients?
We believe that pharmacists with more professional autonomy to provide treatments could more frequently completely satisfy a patient’s healthcare need, without the need for onward referral.

There should be greater freedom for pharmacists to act within their scope of competence. This would be good for patients, whose access to healthcare would not be blocked by unnecessary bureaucracy, and positive for general practice and A&E as pharmacists will be able to deal with more situations and avoid putting further pressure on these stretched services.

This is a natural progression in the role of the pharmacist and exactly the sort of model that the NHS needs to meet its capacity challenges and improve patient experience. Qualifications for pharmacists to prescribe must be fit for purpose to allow the sector to deliver at scale from the community pharmacy setting.

How can we be better at measuring the value-of-face to face interventions in pharmacy?
Many of the incidents cited in this report describe pharmacy interventions that are not routinely recorded or measured, either for the purposes of system learning or for remuneration purposes. A recent study for PSNC shows that pharmacies deliver substantially more in benefits than they receive in payments, providing excellent value for the Department of Health in England.

You can read the full report at npa.co.uk/facetoface or to comment, email independentsvoice@npa.co.uk.