Pharmacy has been overlooked in favour of general practice since the NHS reforms, a leading primary care expert has warned.

Commissioners had prioritised building relationships with GPs over other health professionals, resulting in a "knowledge gap" about pharmacy, NHS Alliance chief executive Rick Stern said at an all-party pharmacy group (APPG) meeting on Tuesday (April 29).

The system was "more complex and more fragmented" for pharmacists since clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and local authorities took on commissioning responsibilities in April last year, he said.

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	"Creating those connections with general practices has taken precedence over other types of primary care. I don't think pharmacy has been connected in the same way," he told the meeting.

The introduction of new commissioning bodies also made the system difficult to navigate, Mr Stern said.

"It isn't all connected up yet, and it doesn't feel like a coherent picture. In some ways it feels more complicated for many pharmacies than it did a year ago," he said.

Watch Reporter Samuel Horti's full interview with Rick Stern

Both local authorities and CCGs still lacked knowledge of the services that pharmacies could offer and there needed to be a "culture shift" to ensure pharmacists' skills were utilised, he told C+D. GPs needed to learn to "let go" of responsibility for clinical services, he added.

Last month, a C+D investigation revealed that only a fifth of health and wellbeing boards had met with LPCs on behalf of local authorities to discuss commissioning services from pharmacies in the year since the NHS reforms.

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