Pharmacists should be "beating a path" to GPs' doors rather than waiting for local professional networks (LPNs) to help establish a relationship with commissioners, NHS leaders have said.
Without an LPN to act as a "bridge" for pharmacists to get services commissioned from clinical commissioning groups (GGCs), pharmacists were in an "ideal position" to engage with local GPs themselves, Horsham and Mid-Sussex CCG clinical chair Minesh Patel said at the Pharmacy Show in Birmingham yesterday (September 30).
LPNs are being trialled by pharmacy, dentistry and optometry as a way for the professions to have a voice in the commissioning system. Pharmacy LPNs are designed to provide leadership and feed back to commissioners, but it was "pretty evident" that not all LPNs were fully established yet, Mr Patel said.
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"Some of you will have worked alongside your GP colleagues for 30 years and never gone into the surgery. That kind of model can't go on" Clare Howard, deputy chief pharmaceutical officer, NHS England |
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There was still a "clunky relationship" between pharmacists, CCGs and NHS England's area teams, which made it difficult to commission services, he said during a debate on whether pharmacy was fit for purpose. |
Your guide to clinical senates and LPNs "A lot of the solutions will need to come from professionals talking to each other, not the commissioners dreaming [up] an interesting innovation to a pathway problem," he told C+D.
NHS England's deputy chief pharmaceutical officer Clare Howard said pharmacists had to "engage properly" with GPs.
"Some of you will have worked alongside your GP colleagues for 30 years and yet have never gone into the surgery. That kind of model can't go on," Ms Howard said during the debate.
As a pharmacist, Ms Howard had organised meetings with her local GP twice a year, she said. But this attitude seemed to be "the exception and not the rule", she added.
"I've never experienced the stereotypical scenario that people describe of community pharmacy and GPs at loggerheads in the locality. But as a community pharmacist I think I did my bit to make sure that wasn't what happened," she said.
In response to freedom of information requests, less than a quarter of CCGs said they had met with LPCs to discuss commissioning services through community pharmacies, a C+D investigation revealed in July.
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