There must be “parity between professions” for the government’s neighbourhood health plans to work, GP and Primary Care Board representative Jagan John said yesterday.
Speaking on a Pharmacy Show panel about how neighbourhood health can reduce health inequalities, John said that “if we are going to really change the culture of neighbourhood working and break down barriers” between GPs and pharmacists, the professions need to develop “as a collective group”.
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He added that that there is “nothing to stop pharmacy colleagues being the leaders of neighbourhood teams”.
“How far do you want to stretch yourself? It’s not just about you providing your existing services.”
John also told delegates that the current health system is “reactive” rather than proactive, and has become “more of a crisis centre”.
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He added that “there is a lot of confusion out there, even now, about how services work and interact”.
“The advantage of neighbourhoods is not just about access, it’s actually how do we see the right people in the right place?” he said.
“Unless we do that, it’s not sustainable. The NHS currently isn’t sustainable.”
“Not the time to hide”
Community Pharmacy Greater Manchester director of strategy and transformation Luvjit Kandula also called on pharmacy teams to do more to connect to the broader primary care network.
She said that “every pharmacy needs to come out of its shell and start getting to know its local community”.
If pharmacies don’t form a “mature partnership” with the rest of primary care, they “will stay in isolation” and their lives “will be an uphill struggle”, she warned.
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“Everybody else is breaking down the barriers already,” Kandula said. “If we aren’t on that bus now, we are basically going to be left behind.”
In a talk the previous day on building good relationships with GPs, Kandula also told delegates that “building effective relationships with general practice is absolutely critical to neighbourhood working and general prescribing”.
“Now is not the time to hide,” she said.
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And National Pharmacy Association integration lead Michael Lennox said that “no pharmacy is an island now. You are in an archipelago called a neighbourhood”.
He told delegates that he attended the primary care event Best Practice last week, where there was “an awful lot of community pharmacy stuff” for “the first time really ever”.
“I think the tide is turning in general practice as well. They need us,” he said.
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It comes after the Royal College of Pharmacy said last month that proposals on neighbourhood health contracting models are “too centred on general practice and NHS providers”.
And it follows a report from April on the economic viability of pharmacies being part of the neighbourhood health service providing “yet more evidence of the extraordinary pressures that community pharmacies are facing”, according to Community Pharmacy England.
