Community pharmacy “must be recognised as central” to delivering the 10-year health plan, Baroness Redfern has said.
In a second reading of the Health Bill in the House of Lords on October 13, peers discussed the current state of the bill and proposed amendments.
During the debate, Redfern noted the “concerning” loss of 1,500 pharmacies over the last 10 years.
Read more: NHS 10-year plan ‘not really a plan’, say pharmacy sector leaders
“Pharmacy teams must be recognised as central to delivering this 10-year plan,” she said. “Pharmacies already increase care closer to home and support prevention strategies.”
Baroness Janke also called pharmacies “the pillars of community health” and stressed that they “are in widespread decline due to a £2bn funding gap”.
She added that 45% of pharmacies are “relying on personal savings or remortgaging their homes just to keep their doors open to the public”.
“Not fit for purpose”
Lord Young of Cookham, also attending the debate, told peers that “we do not actually have a national health service”.
“We have a series of local health services – medical centres, pharmacies and district general hospitals - held together by a network that is often not fit for purpose,” he said.
He added that “quite often, it is not the individual treatments or consultations that go astray but the communications between them”.
Read more: GP says neighbourhood health needs ‘parity between professions’
And Baroness Pidgeon acknowledged the “important role of community pharmacies as another part of primary care”, adding that the sector “must be fully at the table with integrated care boards if neighbourhood health is truly to work”.
She said this “needs to change in the bill”.
The Health Bill will move on to the committee stage to be debated in more detail later this month.
Read more: Pharmacy APPG chair urges govt for £600m funding settlement
It comes after National Pharmacy Association chief executive Henry Gregg said at the Pharmacy Show that the 10-year health plan is “not really a plan because there isn’t a financial plan that sits underneath it”.
And it follows a GP speaking at the Pharmacy Show calling for “parity between professions” for the government’s neighbourhood health plans to work.
