LPCs will increasingly be faced with NHS budget-holders wanting to commission services from only selected pharmacies in their areas, Ash Soni, a senior pharmacist and NHS Future Forum member, has warned.

Mr Soni – NHS Future Forum representative, chair of Lambeth PCT's professional executive committee (PEC) and a community pharmacist contractor – said LPCs would find that they were not necessarily able to negotiate funding for services to be delivered by all of the pharmacies they represented.

"LPCs are going to have to learn how to work with that challenge" Ash Soni, NHS Future Forum

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"LPCs are going to have to learn how to work with that challenge," he warned, speaking at the Avicenna Conference 2012 in Sri Lanka this weekend. In Lambeth, an alcohol detox programme, due to roll out from the beginning of May, had been commissioned from just 10 pharmacies, Mr Soni said. After asking for expressions of interest from all pharmacies in the area, the PCT had mapped willing pharmacies against areas of greatest need to select the eventual providers, he explained.

Similar to a supervised methadone consumption service, the alcohol detox service is a five- or six-day programme of daily chlorodiazepoxide supply, dispensed as long as the patient is found to have no alcohol in his or her bloodstream.

Catch up on how the Avicenna Conference in Sri Lanka is going with C+D deputy and features editor Jennifer Richardson's conference blog.