Pharmacists are more likely to get services commissioned from clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) if they plan them with GPs, NHS Alliance chairman Dr Mike Dixon has said.

Dr Dixon told C+D that GPs and pharmacists had been "played off against each other" when providing services in the past, but were "going beyond that now". He said that there was now more benefit in GPs and pharmacists "working together to generate business".

"There's much more that pharmacists and GP practices can do together" Mike Dixon, NHS Alliance	More on the commissioning Pharmacists fit 'at the centre' of the new NHS NHS Alliance chief: focus on services over dispensing Pharmacy risks being left unrewarded in new NHS
	Commissioning groups should be "very open to suggestions from local pharmacists and practitioners about integrated services they might want to produce", he said at the NHS Alliance Conference in Bournemouth on November 21.

"There's much more that pharmacists and GP practices can do together than they could separately. I would hope we would see local providers and local general practice meeting to decide how they can extend the services they offer within the community... and then proactively discussing with the CCG how they can do that," he said.

The role of GPs on CCGs meant there was still "a big risk of conflict of interest", but providing combined services with pharmacists might offer a solution.

"If you've got two providers offering something that's integrated, possibly within a budget set by the CCGS... all you're doing is dividing the expertise within the budget that they originally had," he said.