The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has called for the government to commission NHS obesity services through community pharmacies, following news of a £25m funding package to “incentivise” GPs to offer weight loss jabs.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DH) announced today that it has “ring-fenced” millions in funding to improve patients’ access to weight loss support and jabs on the NHS.
Read more: ‘Constrained’ GLP-1 access could worsen health inequalities
It said the investment will see GPs “incentivised to boost high-quality obesity care for patients” - including evidence-based advice, referrals to weight management programmes and, where “clinically appropriate”, NHS-funded weight loss jabs “with wraparound support”.
The funding “recognises how central general practice is in helping to tackle the obesity crisis” and preventing diabetes “by coordinating care locally and working in partnership with specialist weight management services”, it added.
Sluggish
NPA chief executive Henry Gregg said the NHS rollout of weight loss drugs “remains very slow” with “only a handful of patients” being treated, and “has hardly begun at all” in some parts of the country.
“This means that the vast majority of patients will be receiving weight loss treatment from their pharmacy,” he added.
He told C+D the government “should be using the expertise pharmacies have in this area” and should “commission them to provide weight management services on the NHS, rather than relying on overstretched GPs”.
Read more: Wraparound: Pharmacy2U pledges ‘next-generation’ obesity care
“Pharmacies have significant experience delivering weight loss treatment to patients,” he added. “With the right levels of funding and support, they are well-placed to speed up the current sluggish NHS rollout.”
And he said community pharmacies “can provide a patient with the care they need to achieve a sustainable weight loss, through wraparound support and careful lifestyle changes, where a patient is eligible for treatment”.
Bringing jabs “to the many”
Commenting on the new funding, health secretary Wes Streeting said he is “determined that access” to weight loss medicines “should be based on need, not ability to pay”.
“Outside the NHS, we’ve seen those who can spare the cash buying privately, and the proliferation of rogue prescribers peddling dangerous unlicensed drugs that are putting patients at risk,” he said.
Read more: ‘Risky dosing hacks’ increase as weight loss jab prices rise
He added that investing in GPs “will help bring this modern medicine to the many, not just the few, and help shift the focus of the NHS from treatment to prevention”.
“These new incentives for GPs will bring the principle of fairness - which has always underpinned the NHS - to obesity jabs, with the phased rollout to those with highest clinical need first.”
Read more: Patients ‘forced’ to get weight loss jabs privately, watchdog warns
It comes after the Health Foundation warned that the availability of weight loss medications on the NHS is “constrained” and leaves the private sector “as the main way of accessing treatment”.
The benefits of weight loss drugs “will disproportionately benefit those already advantaged”, the charity said, while people living in deprived areas will “lag further behind”.
Meanwhile, Pharmacy2U has announced a partnership with Reset Health that will offer patients glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medicines for weight loss while “providing the clinical wraparound care essential for sustained results”.
