“By April 2027, subject to additional funding, we will invest an additional £15 million in community pharmacy and general practice pharmacy,” the Northern Irish DH announced yesterday (December 10).
Health minister Mike Nesbitt introduced the initiative as part of a new “health and social care three-year plan for the “stabilisation, reform and delivery” of health services in an address to the NI Assembly yesterday.
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“I recognise that our health and social care system continues to be under severe pressure and with the onset of winter, the coming weeks and months are not going to be easy,” Nesbitt said.
“[But] I believe it is important to rise above the day-to-day and embrace the opportunity for reform”, he stressed.
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The three-year plan set out that the additional £15m will be invested in “new services and advanced practice roles” in community and GP pharmacies respectively.
It also said that “in the next three years, the implementation of a new community pharmacy strategy will seek to enable pharmacists in this setting to expand their current roles to offer more clinical services”.
“Good deal”
Nesbitt also told the Assembly that he was meeting with unions yesterday “as part of the ongoing work to secure pay settlements for 2024/25”.
“I go into those discussions committed to stabilisation, committed to getting a good deal over the line – and committed to fair and equal pay,” he said.
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Community Pharmacy Northern Ireland (CPNI) chief executive Gerard Greene welcomed the three-year plan and said he “[looks] forward to working with the minister to ensure that local patients have access to first-class pharmacy services close to home”.
He added that the drive for stabilisation, reform and delivery of services was of “fundamental importance to the community pharmacy network being able to play a greater role in health transformation”.
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Meanwhile, C+D last month learned that pharmacies and GPs will not receive additional funding to help with the burden of increased employer national insurance contributions (NICs) – introduced in the autumn budget in October.
And Community Pharmacy England (CPE) last week expressed “severe frustration and intense anger” that negotiations on the next community pharmacy contractual framework (CPCF) for 2024/25 are “stuck”.
