NPA: red tape is 'eating away' at patient access in Wales
Practice The NPA has called on the Welsh government and local health boards (LHBs) to cut the “many bureaucratic burdens” that fall on pharmacists, to allow them to spend more time with patients.
The NPA has called on the Welsh government and local health boards (LHBs) to cut the "many bureaucratic burdens" that fall on pharmacists, to allow them to spend more time with patients.
Welsh pharmacies are "caught in a pincer movement" between increasing bureaucracy, rising prescription volumes and the downward pressures on remuneration, the NPA said in a report released on Friday (February 1).
These pressures are "slowly but surely eating away at one of the great strengths of community pharmacy: its accessibility to the public", the NPA said, as it called on the Welsh government and LHBs to support its campaign to free pharmacy teams to deliver patient care.
|
"I have a serious concern about the level of disconnect with patients and what expectation there is with recording and auditing" Steve Newbury, Newbury Pharmacy, Swansea |
 More on red tape
|
|
The report outlined the "absurd over-regulation" of pharmacy, citing a list of administrative tasks that pharmacists face as well as the complex arrangements required to return unwanted medicines, for handling customer complaints and for dispensing the morning-after pill. An extra five minutes of paperwork a month added up to an hour a year, which across 100 pharmacies meant 100 hours of lost patient contact time, it said. |
Pharmacy bodies call for 'radical simplification' of
information governanceSome red tape was duplicated, the report said, with community health councils, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and LHBs all monitoring and inspecting Welsh pharmacies.
It called for the Welsh government to avoid applying a one-size-fits-all approach to NHS regulation, to reduce the complexity of accreditation processes that pharmacists have to undertake to provide national enhanced services and to stop automatically rolling out contractual requirements that arise in England.
It also called for the Welsh government to work with Westminster on the problem of stock shortages, which was "tying up pharmacy teams in sourcing supplies".
|
"I think we are being strangled with red tape," NPA representation manager for Wales Steve Simmonds told C+D. "When you start ticking boxes you say, how does it improve patient care? Is it evidence based or has somebody in an office dreamed this up?" The one-size-fits-all approach failed to consider the impact on smaller pharmacies, Mr Simmonds said. "Whatever you ask pharmacists to do, it has to have an evidence-based approach and if it does not then let's get rid of it," he added. Contractor at Newbury Pharmacy in Swansea Steve Newbury said he accepted reports had to be done but said pharmacists had to spend a lot of time on it – often after hours. |
|
Time lost to red tape in numbersAn extra five minutes of paperwork each month equates to one hour of workload a year which is 700 hours across Wales' 700 pharmacies. In 700 hours pharmacy teams could have: Supplied over 28,000 medicines to patients Carried out over 700 significant prescription interventions Supported over 5,600 people to self-care Referred on 210 patients to other providers Source: NPA |
"I have a serious concern about the level of disconnect with patients and what expectation there is with recording and auditing," he told C+D. "There is such enormous pressure."
The NPA has sent the report to the Welsh government, the LHBs, the health and social care committee of the Welsh Assembly, the GPhC and NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson.
|
How is bureaucracy affecting the care you can give to patients? Comment below or email us at [email protected] You can also find C+D on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook |
