The CCA has submitted its evidence to the 10-year plan outlining how community pharmacy can deliver the Government’s three shifts in healthcare.
Community pharmacy is integral to accelerating each of the three shifts envisaged by the government – moving hospital to community care, from analogue to digital and from treating sickness to prevention, the CCA’s submission to the 10-year plan states.
The CCA believe the sector can deliver a wide range of services that could implement the Government’s vision for healthcare. However, this is only possible if there is concrete action to address the current funding crisis.
Community pharmacy could enhance its role in prevention through:
- An expanded role in vaccination delivery – a recent CCA analysis shows how pharmacies could free up 10m GP vaccination appointments each year, and drive uptake in vaccine hesitant and underserved groups, amid concerning drops in vaccine uptake overall[1].
- A greater role in screening – a recent CCA analysis demonstrated how a diabetes screening service could screen 1.5m adults, would save the NHS £50m recurring, and prevent almost 7,000 heart attacks and strokes, each year[2].
- A national emergency hormonal contraception (EHC) service providing free-at-the-point access to EHC ending the postcode lottery of access patients currently face[3].
- A national smoking cessation service given smoking accounts for approximately 75,000 deaths a year and costs the NHS £2.6bn annually.
The expansion of Pharmacy First is key to moving more care into the community. As of October 2024, pharmacies delivered 1.4m urgent care consultations for conditions that would otherwise have been seen elsewhere in the NHS[4]. An expanded Pharmacy First service could free up 30m+ GP appointments each year[5]. Moreover, independent prescribing and the generational opportunity it offers must be harnessed through the commissioning of services which utilise prescribers, the CCA’s submission argues.
The rollout of these services and additional workload by pharmacies is only possible if the existing funding black hole is addressed. As the CCA’s submission notes, continued underfunding is hindering businesses from being able to invest in the innovative services and practices that patients need.
The annual funding shortfall is estimated to have risen to £100,000 per pharmacy in England since 2015[6]. The Government’s own figures show that between 31 March 2017 and 30 September 2024, there was a net loss of 1,250 pharmacies. The CCA’s analysis shows that closures are disproportionately skewed towards more deprived communities, with 35% of closures occurring in the 20% most deprived communities[7]. Moreover, CCA analysis has found that the equivalent of 3.4m hours of pharmacy access per year had been lost between September 2022 and June 2024[8].
As well as core funding, the CCA urge policymakers to address several ‘barriers’ which are inhibiting community pharmacies:
- Continued ARRS recruitment, depleting the community pharmacy workforce.
- A lack of impetus and planning on how to harness independent prescribing and upskill the legacy pharmacist workforce to become prescribers.
- A postcode lottery of commissioning which is creating unnecessary legal, financial and administrative inefficiencies for pharmacy businesses that operate across regional boundaries.
- Updating out-of-date regulation which is failing to make the best use of skill mix within pharmacy teams and limiting pharmacists to dispensing and related tasks.
- Insufficient integration of patient records and interoperability between general practice and community pharmacy.
Malcolm Harrison, Chief Executive of the CCA said: “Pharmacies are absolutely integral to delivering the shifts to prevention and care closer to the community.
The network is ready to do even more – but the foundations need fixing.
Community pharmacy can help to release capacity elsewhere in the NHS, but with each pharmacy in England now suffering a funding shortfall of £100,000 every year, the conditions for investment are simply not there.
Policymakers must, urgently, remedy the funding crisis. Any action on funding needs to go hand-in-hand with action to address the workforce challenges, updating outdated regulation, and ensuring commissioning provides patients in different postcodes with a universal offer”.
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