Pharmacy must strike the right balance between providing free and paid-for services, Boots UK's director of pharmacy Peter Bainbridge has said.

Although some interventions were simply part of the job, pharmacists should be getting the "right level of reward" for full services, Mr Bainbridge told C+D in an exclusive interview on Monday (March 24).

Mr Bainbridge named Boots' diabetes risk assessments, launched last year, as an example of a service the multiple was happy to provide for free.

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	"On something like a diabetic risk assessment, should we be recompensed for that or, actually, is it just about a pharmacist having a conversation with a patient about how they can look after their health better?" he asked. "To be honest, I don't think we should be recompensed for that because we're just doing our job."

But Mr Bainbridge stressed that Boots would push for funding if it started moving into diabetes testing and monitoring – services that it would "absolutely" consider for the future. "I think pharmacy should be paid for [those services] – especially if we can do them better, cheaper and in a more efficient way than the existing providers," he argued.

Mr Bainbridge stressed the importance of pharmacy receiving the right level of remuneration for its work. "It's [about achieving] a balance between the existing role of pharmacists and the enhanced care that role might bring, and then getting that compensation," he added.

Overall, Mr Bainbridge said that NHS commissioners were "very interested" in funding new pharmacy services if the evidence was there. But he warned that this might involve providing services free of charge at first to gather data. "Pharmacy has to really demonstrate it can do [the service], prove the outcomes and then take this to the NHS and say, ‘this is how we can help'," he said.

Earlier this month, Boots said the results of the Community Pharmacy Future project had "really demonstrated and quantified the value of pharmacy". The project, which involved pharmacies running three service pilots and gathering data on their outcomes, proved the NHS could save more than £470 million a year if it commissioned nationwide COPD and medicine support services.

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