EXCLUSIVE

NHS England will not "keep harping back” to its Call to Action consultation on community pharmacy, its deputy chief pharmaceutical officer has told C+D.

The commissioning body's Five Year Forward View document - published last year with four references to the sector - had a “whole raft of stuff" that showed "pharmacy has a huge role to play”, Bruce Warner told C+D in exclusive interview last month (May 20).

Although the document made no specific reference to the Call to Action, Mr Warner said the more than 800 consultation responses from pharmacists had been “taken account of and are there”.

“Whether or not they are published as a single document doesn’t mean what was in that Call to Action wasn’t listened to. If we look at what is actually happening [in the NHS] we will see a lot of the Call to Action has been acted upon,” he added.

The consultation was originally intended to feed into NHS England's wider primary care strategy. The commissioning body told C+D in November that "everything" about this strategy had been included in the Five Year Forward View document, but the following month it confirmed it would publish a response to the Call to Action in "early 2015".

NHS England also told C+D in March that its detailed vision for pharmacy would be published “in the coming months”. This would reflect its aim for the sector to play “the fullest possible role at the heart of more integrated out-of-hospital services”, it said at the time.
 

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