The role of community pharmacy has evolved at a much greater rate in Scotland than in England because of the differences between the two countries' community pharmacy contracts, NHS Alliance policy director Michael Sobanja has claimed.

England's community pharmacy contract must be re-assessed to encourage collaboration between pharmacists and GPs and improve health outcomes, Mr Sobanja told a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Primary Care and Public Health last Monday (April 15).

Mr Sobanja said the current contract in England rewarded pharmacists for their "procurement expertise" and did not always "go to the heart of patient care".

Financial incentives across the health service had been in the wrong place for "a number of years", and they encouraged GPs and pharmacists to compete with each other rather than work together, Mr Sobanja warned.

"If you look at the role of community pharmacy in Scotland, it's evolved at a much greater rate than I would argue it has in England" Michael Sobanja, NHS Alliance

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"If you look at the role of community pharmacy in Scotland, it's evolved at a much greater rate than I would argue it has in England, certainly with regards to pharmacist prescribing. That's entirely due to the way that policies have been implemented by the Scottish executive compared to the Department of Health," Mr Sobanja argued. Community Pharmacy Scotland policy development pharmacist Matthew Barclay told C+D that the country had been fortunate there had been a consensus between the Scottish government and pharmacy contractors about the way forward for the sector.

Mr Barclay pointed to the IT infrastructure as being crucial to the contract. The minor ailments service, the national PGD for emergency supply and the out-of-hours referral system were also examples of successes for pharmacy under the Scottish contract, he said.

England's contractual negotiating committee PSNC said there were "far more similarities than there are differences" between community pharmacy services in the two countries.

"Of course there are some differences in the way that these services are provided and commissioned because different countries, health departments and systems present specific challenges and so necessarily require their own tailored approaches," PSNC chief executive Sue Sharpe claimed.

However PSNC said it was worth exploring how to learn from the Scottish contract if it did encourage collaboration between GPs and pharmacists.

At the C+D Summit earlier this month, England's chief pharmaceutical officer Keith Ridge promised there would be more integration between pharmacy and other professionals in future primary care contracts.