Public Health England (PHE) has urged local councils to commission more community pharmacy services, particularly through healthy living pharmacies (HLPs).

Local authorities in England need to review their existing pharmacy services and decide whether they match the needs of the public, PHE said yesterday (March 30).

They should consider commissioning community pharmacies to deliver a range of services, including sexual health services and blood pressure management schemes, it said.

PHE's comments came in a joint report published alongside the Local Government Association (LGA).

In the report, both groups encouraged councils to ask local people about the current community pharmacy services in their area and how they could be expanded.

Benefit of HLPs

Commissioning services through healthy living pharmacies (HLPs) in particular could benefit patients, because staff are "trained to take a more proactive approach to improving health and wellbeing", PHE and the LGA said.

"Pharmacy staff, especially in HLPs, tend to use every interaction in the pharmacy setting as an opportunity for making a health promoting intervention," they said.

Key recommendations from the report:

- Ask local people for their views on current community pharmacy services, and how they could be expanded and/or improved

- Engage with community pharmacies as key providers or potential providers of local public health services

- Include the pharmacy local professional networks (LPN) chair and local pharmaceutical committee (LPC) in stakeholder engagement activity, to help assess the health needs of the local population, and to review and update their area's pharmaceutical needs assessment (PNA) and joint health and well-being strategy

- Engage with LPCs, NHS England, CCGs and PHE to design and develop locally-commissioned pharmacy services to meet the public health needs of the local population 

- Review existing commissioning arrangements to ensure that they are locally appropriate, of sufficient quality and effectiveness.

Should councils commission more pharmacy services?

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