The enigma of the variations

There are very good points mentioned in this article by Gary.

Excellent article as always. Community Pharmacy as a whole is treated by the authorities like an afterthought in most matters. I am a locum but cant help feeling for the owner of the store where I work. Payments for important and needed services are being cut to the bone.

Gary makes some excellent points and shows some incredible examples of variation. The difficulty is that until we start to truly understand the value of what pharmacy provides it will be undervalued and devalued. It is not helped by those that continue to promote "free" services as a competitive offering as any commissioner would instantly seize upon it as demonstration that pharmacy must be making enough to continue to offer these extra freebies. I know we are told that under competition law we can't share information at the risk of creating a cartel but this is about professional services and surely we can share what a service offers in an area for what price as I'm sure this is common practice between commissioning clusters

Good reason for the PSNC to negotiate services at a national level.

We need total HAG coverage for the country. (harmonisation of accreditation), that way we can do more services without having to do a course for every PCT you locum in.