Question 5: How will the NMS affect pharmacy's future?    

What you said: Pharmacists appear to have little confidence in the future of the NMS, as three quarters of Senate survey respondents believed pharmacy would have problems getting the service off the ground.

What the Senators said: The service would be vital to the future of the sector, Senators warned. Mr Birchall stressed that pharmacy would struggle to get more services commissioned if the NMS was not a success. "If we don't deliver, the NMS and MURs could be decommissioned and we don't know that money will go back into [the sector]," he said. "It would be very difficult to build the profession back up again and get more national services commissioned."

Mr Birchall stressed that pharmacists must work to implement the NMS as quickly as possible. "I think it's important to deliver the service at the beginning of the 18 months, rather than at the end," he said.

What the negotiator said: Pharmacists may have less time than they think to prove the value of the service, warned Mr Buxton. "We need to start giving data from September next year, so that gives you a good idea of the timeline involved," he explained.

And he reiterated the need for pharmacies to adapt to the NMS. "If this service is valuable, the NHS will want all pharmacies providing it, so that will provide quite a challenge for those who want to continue with a supply function," Mr Buxton explained. "But I think we've known for a long time that those people won't necessarily have a secure future, and most people understand that."

Find-out how much you could be paid for the new advanced service, with C+D's NMS paychecker