Speaking as panel chair at the conference in Birmingham on Sunday (October 12), IPA chief executive Hannbeck queried whether pharmacies “based in deprived places where they can’t [offer] private services” should get “different funding” to those in more “affluent areas”.
Frontier Economics director Matthew Bell said that if “we understand how the cost of delivering pharmacy services...varies in different locations, then we’re completely capable” of funding pharmacies in different areas differently, he said.
Read more: Day Lewis: Pharmacy doesn’t need ‘new contract’ but ‘tweaks’
“There are lots of precedents about the fact that [the government] should fund them differently,” he added.
And Nuffield Trust head of public affairs Mark Dayan told delegates that while he “can see the argument” for a tiered system, it “points to a deeper problem” of pharmacies “using their private income to cross-subsidise their NHS income” if it needs to be relied upon.
Read more: What could the next pharmacy funding deal include?
IPA board member Ian Strachan, however, argued that “people should be taking more accountability for their own health provision”.
He said he believes in “private [health] insurance” and argued that “the days of the NHS are numbered”.
It comes after another pharmacy sector leader suggested at the conference that the next pharmacy funding contract does not need to be overhauled but instead simply “tweaked”.
