NHS reforms have delayed HLP expansion, says NPA
National Pharmacy Association chief executive Mike Holden says he would have expected there to be more healthy living pharmacies and a greater role for pharmacy in public health by now
EXCLUSIVE
NHS reforms have stunted the growth of the healthy living pharmacy (HLP) initiative, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has said.
There are now more than 800 HLPs and 2,500 health champions in England, according to figures released by the NPA last Friday (May 30). The number of accredited pharmacies is a 66 per cent increase on April last year.But NPA chief executive Mike Holden told C+D he would have liked to see more HLPs and a greater role for pharmacy in public health by this point.
Public Health England (PHE) promised to enable "swifter progress" of the HLP model, in a separate announcement on Friday. The commissioning body would invest in more staff and administrative assistance to aid the Department of Health's principal pharmaceutical officer Gul Root and its Healthy Living Pharmacy Task Group to "further support the roll-out" of HLPs, it said.
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Mike Holden would like to have seen more HLPs and a greater role for pharmacy in public health by now, the NPA chief told C+D |
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Mr Holden said the sector had done well to "sell" the HLP model to national commissioning bodies with the limited resources available, but the NHS reforms last April had caused "delays in opportunities" to expand the scheme. |
Three quarters of patients do not understand NHS reforms"If I was looking back two or three years ago, I would have hoped we would be further on [by now]. But I can only be pleased the concept is starting to be adopted," he told C+D.
In addition to more than 800 existing HLPs, more than 500 pharmacies were working to become HLP-accredited. A version of the concept is also being launched in Northern Ireland, the NPA said.
Mr Holden said he was confident that PHE's pledge and the hard work of pharmacists and representatives, including the programme leader for the healthy living pharmacies pathfinder work, Deborah Evans, would take the concept to the "next level".
"I would like to see more HLPs [and] more activity through pharmacy's role in public health, whether that's commissioning services around alcohol, diet, weight, health checks or immunisation," he said.
"We should get to a point where people start to talk about how [HLPs] fit within a national contracting framework," he added.
A study last April by the Department of Health, Royal Pharmaceutical Society and NPA found that HLPs could improve patient outcomes and reduce the burden on GPs. At the time, there were 482 HLPs in England.
The HLP initiative was launched by NHS Portsmouth in 2010 and in 2011 20 "pathfinder" sites were established throughout England to roll out the scheme.
In January, PHE pledged to put its "money where its mouth is" to promote community pharmacy's role to local commissioners and scale up the HLP model.
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