Three pharmacy trade bodies “joined together” to attend a roundtable event with pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock yesterday (October 28), the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has said.
Senior figures from the NPA, the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) and the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA) met with Kinnock and government health officials “ahead of the expected start of negotiations for the next round of community pharmacy funding”, it added.
The meeting was attended by the NPA’s chief executive Henry Gregg and chair Olivier Picard, CCA chief executive Malcolm Harrison and IPA board member Ian Strachan.
Read more: Exclusive: Pharmacy bodies unite to meet with Kinnock tomorrow
It follows C+D exclusively revealing this week that the minister had arranged a roundtable with the sector leaders to discuss their thoughts, challenges facing the sector and possible solutions.
During the meeting, the organisations “pressed for the need to close” the sector’s “£2.6 billion funding gap” and “reminded the government of the immense pressure facing pharmacies of all sizes”, the NPA said.
And they told Kinnock that “recent funding uplifts needed to be the beginning of a journey, not the end of one”, it added.
“Together as a sector”
Gregg said that it “was really important” that the bodies “joined together as a sector” to “deliver the same message loud and clear to government ministers”.
“We have told the government today that we’re up for working with [it] to deliver new services, but only with a sustainable funding package that closes the funding gap identified by the NHS’s own analysis,” he added.
Gregg also said that ministers were made aware of the “need to utilise independent prescribers (IPs) or risk seeing these valuable skills leave community pharmacy”.
Read more: IPA writes to pharmacy minister as member profits plunge
“Demonstrating sector-wide unity to government is so important so I was pleased that community pharmacy bodies took the same clear messages to today’s meeting,” Picard added on LinkedIn.
IPA chief executive Dr Leyla Hannbeck said that the “productive meeting” saw the body discuss with Kinnock its “invest to save” proposal - which calls for “reinvesting back into [the] sector the savings that community pharmacies make through their incentivised procurement”.
Read more: CPE warns of ‘gloomy outlook’ for next pharmacy contract
“This does not require new money from the NHS and will provide community pharmacies with the financial boost they desperately need,” she added.
Hannbeck also emphasised that one goal of the meeting was to “ensure a united, positive and realistic front from pharmacy bodies” and said that the organisations had “achieved that”.
And Harrison said that he too was “delighted to join forces with fellow trade associations to meet with the minister”, adding that they are “steadfast in [their] collective belief that community pharmacy has a crucial role to play in delivering the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS”.
“Stagnation and uncertainty”
Meanwhile, Strachan wrote on LinkedIn that Kinnock had made it “clear” that pharmacy “would have to manage expectations” and that the minister had “painted a landscape of stagnation and uncertainty”.
Strachan said that the meeting resulted in “nothing more than a single thread of hope” but that Kinnock “gets” the “invest to save” proposal and “his advisors get it too”.
“The other trade bodies all contributed to this initiative and joined in the discussion - it was refreshing to see the sector rallying behind this initiative,” he said.
Read more: Morrison: Risk services must be ‘stripped out’ if funding short
It comes after Community Pharmacy England (CPE) chief executive Janet Morrison warned that some “core” services could be removed from pharmacies if negotiations for the next contract do not result in a sufficient funding uplift.
Speaking exclusively to C+D at the Pharmacy Show in Birmingham earlier this month, she said that the negotiator will have to “look really hard at what services are most important”.
