dearPHARMACIST March 2016 Issue 2

ISSUE 2

dPinfo

MARCH 2016

dearPHARMACIST

Soon we will all get hit by the government cuts to pharmacy funding. It's been estimated that each pharmacy would lose an average of ÂŁ15,000 in a year. Many of us are campaigning against #pharmacycuts.

However, most of us equate that loss of funding to a full time staff member. I've heard of pharmacy friends who have given up their regular locum cover, and some withdrawing from recruiting new staff members simply to reduce costs. However, I disagree with that knee jerk reaction and believe now is the time to really utilise your staff; and in fact grow your team in number, as well as skills.

Why... You ask?

I worked out on a spreadsheet the number of services we delivered when we were short staffed recently due to long term staff sickness. The number of services we delivered had dropped dramatically and this affected our profits. As soon as staff members were all in, we started delivering services again. On another occasion of being short staffed I observed that due to the pressures of this, my team, and myself, spent less time per engagement with our patients and clients. This meant we didn't up-sell our services through brief interventions or didn't recommended appropriate products, and when we did engage we struggled to deliver what we were offering.

Now, imagine a constant state of being short staffed. Which is what most of my colleagues will be if they reduce their staff numbers. We may reduce our expenses through staff cuts, but equally we will reduce our services, and the quality of advice, that we aim to constantly deliver. This has a further knock-on effect of reducing our professionalism.

Do we really want that?

What we need to do in this breathing period of the proposed funding cuts, is to maximise outputs from each staff member.

To encourage staff to up-skill and then use those skills to benefit your business, patients and our profession.

This needs 'buy in' from all of your pharmacy team. The only way to get this buy in, is to invest time to spend with them explaining and pitching your vision of how you would like your pharmacy to be. What is your mission statement? Build on opportunities from these threats, and reinforce the strengths you, your team and your pharmacy has. A useful tool for upskilling is available on http://dear.cpdeasy.com I have worked on a formula to help us all ... #ASKdP ... Showing off what pharmacy can do!

Sunil K. Kochhar (Consultant Pharmacist for dearPHARMACIST.info)

#ASKdP is a public facing health & lifestyle magazine that will let your community know what pharmacy really offers.

dearPHARMACIST is a central marketing tool using social media to help drive the public into your pharmacy for their health & well-being needs

Up skilling our team is what will grow our profession, and pharmacy. Free training modules to enhance your teams productivity by increasing profit. http://dear.cpdeasy.com

A special thank you to ...

Paul Lowndes & Fawz Farhan (Mediapharm Ltd) Samantha Bradley (rbforhealth.co.uk) Carol Smillie (DIaryDoll) Mike Keen (Kent LPC) Without the help from you I couldn't have got here

Is This a Typical Time in Community Pharmacy?

We live in times of significant change in pharmacy and may well be asking ourselves what is going on?

Government appears to be making conflicting statements and moves; they want to reduce pressure on General Practice surgeries (some are now closing) and do something to help in the face of a lack of GPs; community pharmacy and pharmacists can help fill that gap yet Government wants to close pharmacies. Other countries have realised and tackled this problem and use community pharmacists to prescribe. Here, where urgent and emergency care is a problem, even talks about a common ailments service were stopped.

Mike Keen Chief Executive Officer Kent LPC

One could be tempted to think there is no Government strategic thinking and they make it up as they go along. What to expect in the next month or two and in future years?

The Proposed Closure of Community Pharmacies.

The NHS Five Year Forward View was published by NHS England in October 2014 and included was a view of the role that pharmacies can play helping patients deal with common ailments. The document highlighted the need to improve integrated emergency care services and to move to a preventative approach to managing ill health.

However, this was followed by the recently announced cuts to community pharmacy payments. The end of the consultation on this is on March 24th and will mark the announcement about 2016/7 funding, but there will then be over a year more of opportunities to challenge Government assumptions including the use of robotics and centralised prescription dispensing.

This blow to the community pharmacy sector is a mistake by Government and it is important that patients and patient associations are involved in drawing attention to the damaging effect this cut will have on access to full pharmaceutical services and patient safety. It is predicted that a quarter of community pharmacies could be forced to close and concerns expressed about these plans include: •

The government's plans contradicts its stated ambition to create a clinically focused pharmacy service.

•

The plans will damage patient care.

•

These proposals undermine the community pharmacy network and reduce patient access to services; that will disadvantage the sick and elderly.

•

It ignores all evidence about pharmacy service development. It is seeking to achieve cost savings by splitting dispensing and pharmacy services. Pharmacies will close, services will be lost and supply will be commoditised.

The government's proposals are light on detail.

•

Pharmacy is a diverse profession and is highly unlikely to ignore patient needs and go on strike. This creates a risk that apathy can reign and we all walk unimpeded into closure of pharmacies; that could well be the important local village pharmacy that provides essential and extra services to their clientele and is an added value part of the local community. The local pharmacy is more than just a place to get medicines. It provides a range of face to face NHS services and professional advice without an appointment.

Pharmacies are part of the fabric of local communities. Yet they are under threat from Government plans for “efficiencies” that overlook the potential of the community pharmacy network.

www.dearPHARMACIST.info #ASKdP PAGE 4

I am asking that pharmacies alert their customers to these intended pharmacy closures and when speaking to the MPs: • Ask them to write to Jeremy Hunt for details especially what is planned after 2016/7 • Warn them they will get a placatory response supplied via the DH and don’t believe it • Advise them to keep in touch with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Pharmacy which will be a useful source of advice and information for MPs.

Pharmacists in GP surgeries

Urgent and Emergency Care

In Kent Surrey and Sussex, excellent work is being done on this and a number of surgeries have created roles for an in house pharmacist using Government money. It would be a mistake to see this as a possible replacement for the community pharmacy which sees patients face to face and provides a wide range of services, some unfunded, based in the community.

This is a much debated subject and it appears that commissioners are having trouble recognising the benefits of an urgent repeat medicines service and a common ailments service for the public. Coupled with the intended closure of pharmacies this will almost certainly result in patients arriving at doctors’ surgeries and hospital accident and emergency departments for help in matters that were best dealt with in pharmacy. Commissioners need to realise this and put in place schemes while there is still time.

Commissioning Virgin has recently won its first major contract in Kent managing cottage hospitals on the North Kent Coast.

This is a major contract and we may now see more Virgin services in Kent.

Diabetes There are over 2.6 million people with diabetes in England and it is growing challenge for the NHS. In West Kent alone the current estimate is that 19000 people or 4% of the population have diabetes. Across Kent the figure is higher. During the year to March 2015 in West Kent, 105 patients suffered a hypoglycaemic attack resulting in a visit to hospital and some stayed in costing the NHS over £33500.

Currently a large amount of hospital patients are admitted for a reason related to diabetes and many for emergency treatment after developing hypoglycaemia. More services and support needs to be available in the community and community pharmacies are well placed to deliver this.

Public health challenges It is a sad fact that public health budgets have been cut back at the same time as the above threats have been delivered to pharmacy. This will seriously damage efforts to deliver more preventative healthcare solutions as per the NHS Five Year Forward Plan and result in even higher expenditure later on, to deal with sick people. Public health is a crucial part of any health service and your local community pharmacy helps provide accessible and professional expertise on the spot and where necessary, refer patients to appropriate colleague practitioners.

Overall You may think that we are embattled on all fronts! However in these situations the biggest allies we have are the public who elect our Government and whereas when we say something it will be “they would wouldn’t they,” when the public shout they are heard because if not they may not vote in a particular local councilor or national Government at the next elections. Your local Healthwatch representative should be made aware of this risk to patients and be able to help.

#MK

What's in #ASKdP? Key feature: You could be diabetic?

The public are now very aware of type 2 diabetes.

However, they don't realise that a simple HbA1c test from the pharmacy can let them know their diabetic status.

To set up this as a service in your pharmacy; send an email to sunil@dearpharmacist.info You can help your community live longer by training your staff to deliver this great service.

FREE training available for you and your team.

Register now on http://dear.cpdeasy.com

Once you place your copies of #ASKdP onto your pharmacy counters you'll be #ASKed several questions.

Below is a guide to help you and your team answer any questions from your patients & clients.

#pharmacycuts Get support from your patients

Get

Make sure you, your team and your patients sign the on-line petition to fight the reduced funding to pharmacy https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/116943 Use stories from your teams on how pharmacy is crucial for your community; for their health & well-being. Examples are on page 10 & 11 of #ASKdP

Write to your MP Pharmacy

Need help setting up private services? Bespoke services set-up is available. Staff training, equipment & consumables, and clinic room set up. You'll be left ready to deliver! Quote "set-up" (m) 07957 186708 (e) sunil@dearpharmacist.info www.dearPHARMACIST.info #ASKdP PAGE 6

Carol Smillie talks about what to avoid in pregnancy Engage with pregnant women, those planning to get pregnant, and new mums.

Website: www.cppe.ac.uk

Email: info@cppe.ac.uk

Telephone: 0161 7784000

CPPE events, Kent area, April to September 2016 Sexual Health all day event (In collaboration with Kent Community Health Trust) This study day will cover emergency contraception, safeguarding and chlamydia to enable you to meet the requirements for providing an emergency contraception service.

Venue; Trinity House, Ashford TN25 4AZ Date; 2 April 2016 Booking Reference; 44709 Tutor; Laraine Clark Polypharmacy focal point workshop To help pharmacy teams to develop the confidence, competence and communication skills to work in partnership with patients and other healthcare professionals to enable patients to get the most from their multiple medicines and minimise medication related problems.

Venue; William Harvey Education Centre, Ashford, TN24 0LZ Date; 21 April 2016 Booking Reference; 44960 Tutor; Laraine Clark Venue; Holiday Inn Maidstone, Sevenoaks, TN15 7RS Date; 3 May 2016 Booking Reference; 45005 Tutor; Diar Fattah TheLearningpharmacy.com workshop TheLearningpharmmacy.com is an interactive online learning environment for the whole pharmacy team. The aim of this workshop is to support pharmacy teams in identifying opportunities to use theLearningpharmacy.com resource as a valuable teaching and learning tool in the pharmacy.

Venue; Canterbury Christ Church University College, Canterbury CT1 1QU Date; 8 June 2016 Booking Reference; 44955 Tutor; Laraine Clark Booking is essential for all events, via www.cppe.ac.uk or 0161 7784000 Check the website for the latest listings, other learning programmes and news.

If you have any questions please get in touch with your local tutors; West Kent; Diar Fattah, diar.fattah@cppe.ac.uk East Kent; Laraine Clark, laraine.clark@cppe.ac.uk Regional manager for SE Coast; Sarah Ridgway Green, sarah.ridgwaygreen@cppe.ac.uk

www.cppe.ac.uk