pharmacyTALK Issue 3 June 2016

ISSUE 3

dPinfo

JUNE 2016

Uniting pharmacy through conversations www.pharmacyTALK.co.uk is an internet forum, creating an online discussion site for you, and your pharmacy team. Through conversations we can unite pharmacy. Join now, it's FREE. Welcome to pharmacyTALK, powered by dearPHARMACIST. We have created this for anyone in pharmacy - whether you are a student of pharmacy, work in hospital, the community, or whatever your connection is to pharmacy - this is the forum for you.

Our aim is to help unite pharmacy through conversations.

Conversations will empower us to build pharmacy by sharing issues, celebrations, hurdles, and opinions. Be part of the conversation - membership is free.

Let's explore the 5 awesome benefits you will get by joining pharmacyTALK - sign up today!

1. Gain ideas - Hot debates, questions asked, and better still test the viability of your own idea. This forum will allow you to tap into the pulse of all things happening in pharmacy. The more people there are having conversations, the greater the potential to gain, as well as share, ideas.

2. Increase knowledge - Let's suppose you're a newbie.

You've entered pharmacy and feel like you're flapping around like a fish out of water trying to make sense of it all.

What better way than to have online coaching and support.

In the forum you will see people asking the same questions as you, and many who are answering those questions. An excellent place to skip those mistakes, learning fast and avoiding common pitfalls at the same time!

3. Mentorship - Become successful in half the time.

Starting a new service, or a study course. There's always someone else who has had the experience. These online mentors will give you advice and direction. You may be someone's mentor too.

4. Build relationships - Pharmacy can only be successful by building strong relationships with your peers. Forums are an excellent source for relationship building. Meet other healthcare professionals, friends and future colleagues. Networking on the forum takes little effort. The simple formula is to stay active in the forum, network and engage with other members. Lend a helping hand and you'll automatically build those relationships.

5. Establish expertise - Look for conversations that deal with your particular niche, or start one yourself. Making everyone aware of your expertise, and providing others with solutions to their problems. By doing this, you never know what may come your way.

The only way to make the most of pharmacyTALK is to get involved with the conversations. Be a sponge, soak in everything. Don't disregard something just because it wasn't meant for you. If it's related to you in any way, pay attention. If it proves to solve a problem, share the conversations with everyone you know.

We just ask you to remember a few golden rules to pharmacyTALK: Be respectful, be active, be engaging, be helpful, provide value and above all - unite pharmacy through conversations.

Plan B and Connect2pharma

Connect 2Pharma

NHS England has indicated they want a 6% cut in the global sum which will mean a fall of £170m in funding for Community pharmacies in England.

The PSNC has responded with Plan A, a huge publicity campaign in association with the NPA and a counter offer.

6% cut £170m

Community Pharmacy currently provides a range of services that do not generate a return on investment.

In the proposed cuts, there may be no standard practice payment, so community pharmacies need an alternative source of revenue.

Plan B is the answer. Plan B is based on the strength of community pharmacy as a professional retail healthcare environment and relies on the capability of the community pharmacy team to engage with patients to offer suitable treatments. People need and want better healthcare. The NHS is stretched to breaking point and has no money to even pay for existing services. Community Pharmacy is the solution.

Proactive clinical community pharmacy practice is a planned approach to answer patient healthcare needs.

The pharmacy team identify and target specific customers with known complaints and predictable healthcare needs. The team will actively engage the customer, discuss elements of their disease and establish areas where there is a need and offer a parcel of care. It is easier to describe this through a worked example:

KNOWLEDGE In depth disease and complication knowledge • 80% of patients with diabetes have early signs of foot damage – offer a foot care program • 50% of patients will have signs of gingivitis – offer an oral health program • 50% of patients have dry eye disease – offer a dry eye treatment program

The point is simple – rather than wait for customers to complain about dry skin on their feet or tired and itchy eyes – go out and find them – and have a well-designed parcel of care to offer them.

In due course I am sure that your local GPs will support your service – after all it leaves them time to manage other aspects of diabetes care – and they may find it easier to simply refer the patient to you.

www.dearPHARMACIST.info #ASKdP PAGE 4

Connect2pharma (C2P) Connect2pharma acts as a unique interface between manufacturers who produce innovative products and community pharmacy that needs to deliver new parcels of care to their customers.

Community Pharmacies need new parcels of care that they can proactively offer to their customers.

Companies who believe that they have developed an innovative product which reflects patient’s needs find it difficult to get their products to the people who would benefit.

Community Pharmacies should be clinically led, not procurement driven. Products should be stocked based on their position within a parcel of care and not because the wholesaler has a special deal. Community Pharmacy should be all about high quality healthcare – selling products because they are right and not because they are cheap. If people want something cheap, let them go on-line – if they want quality advice matched with a quality product, tell them to go to the pharmacy.

How we work

Connect2pharma provides the bridge between innovative products and the patient by working with manufacturers and community pharmacists to create parcels of care.

A foot care service for customers with diabetes is our first complete parcel of care.

Inspect

Moisturise

Prevent

solesee mirror to inspect the sole of your feet

Allpresan foam cream specially developed for diabetic feet

specialist diabetic socks

Connect2pharma has selected these products specifically for diabetic patients and are all fit for purpose.

We supply training packages, posters and leaflets to support each parcel of care.

Join up for free at www.connect2pharma.co.uk download the parcels of care and get started.

If you want to be part of our early adopter pharmacy group, contact us at info@connect2pharma.co.uk @connect2pharma

Is unity the NHS cuts survival tool? Interview by Sunil Kochhar [SK], Vice Chair of Kent LPC As I write this, I realise that we are half way through 2016. Six months have past since the 17th December 2015, when the government decided to cut our funds! I’m not sure about you, but that time has just disappeared. To think it will be the same length of time till the affects of the cuts hits us in our January payment.

A question that keeps running in my head - am I the 1 in 3000? If I don't act now, I could be.

If you haven’t thought much about the funding cuts, I urge you to start planning now. This will have an affect on every community pharmacy in England. It’s time to wake up to this fact and take action.

My mission for this article was to see what common factor we could all embrace that would help us survive these funding cuts. In this journey during the last six months, I’ve had in depth conversations with colleagues that have great expertise and experience. All of them came out with one common solution, or should I say problem… Pharmacy is not united! It’s time to embrace your competitor and unite for the survival of pharmacy.

I took this step and joined two groups in Kent (KCP LLP and Salveo Health Limited). Both are varied, and brings different qualities into my pharmacy. Why both? I have asked myself that recently too. Currently I am Vice Chair of Kent LPC. So I am also wondering why do we need these groups at all, when the LPC is a single body that unites all contractors in Kent & Medway. To answer this question, I interviewed two local leaders, Kevin Cottrell & Amish Patel, to gain insight to the groups.

Amish Patel [AP], Director of Salveo Health Ltd

Kevin Cottrell [KC], Chair of KCP LLP

Uniting pharmacy through conversations

[SK] In one line please give me the mission statement of your group.

[KC] To provide a single point of contact where Commissioners across Kent can go to access a network of committed pharmacies who are both able and willing to provide public health services to a high and consistent standard.

[AP] To enhance and support the health and wellbeing of our communities through the unity and collaborative working of healthcare professionals; with the primary objective of Salveo Health being, to get commissioned services for it's members.

[KC] KCP LLP represents 130 pharmacies across Kent and can contract with Public Health, CCGs etc to provide services and to manage the provision of those services by its members. We have already won the sexual health contract for pharmacy in Kent and plan to tender for more [SK] Why is it important for pharmacists to unite and form services in the future as they come out. If pharmacies are to groups such as yours? weather the storm of cuts on the horizon, then they need to maximise service income in every form and must certainly [AP] Competition is greater than ever before, and pharmacy not be excluded from any services. contractors have historically worked in isolation. But with advances in technology, advances in the healthcare service, [AP] By uniting, we can, share best practice, share resources, and the higher expectations being set from patients, it is costs, and become social with our colleagues. We need to becoming harder to meet the healthcare needs of our work together to get fair value for products and services. communities. By coming together, we will create a joint This overall will result in increased professionalism for the pharmacy network. This is what commissioners want. We sector, better patient care, increased revenue for us all. would therefore be able to go directly to public health and Other benefits to being part of the Salveo Health group NHSE, and tender for services. include: Invitations to training events, Training for commissioned services, Innovative services created by Whether you’re a multiple or an independent contractor, we Salveo Health that you can deliver privately, and most are part of the pharmacy profession. We need to put our importantly a network of pharmacy teams to which we professional qualifications and knowledge to best use, and the share best practice and in turn help us all maximise our future of doing this is through commissioned services. business potential.

[KC] Commissioners are increasingly looking to contract with one provider for delivery of a service rather than going down the LPC route and contracting individually with each pharmacy. This means that pharmacies risk being subcontractors with no input into the design, and payments, for services.

[SK] How do contractors join your group, and the best contact details to signpost them to?

[KC] Contractors can join our group by contacting myself by email on kevin.cottrell@sgcourt.co.uk

[AP] Salveo Health Membership is open to everyone, and [SK] What advantage would it make to contractors to join it’s free to join. You can email your interest to me directly your group? Specifically answering how they will benefit by on amish1985@gmail.com, and I will send over the joining to protect them from the 3000 closures set out by membership forms.

DOH. [SK] Thank you for sharing what your groups have to www.dearPHARMACIST.info #ASKdP PAGE 6 offer. I am hoping that all contractors in Kent & Medway will join the great work you are both doing.

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Preparing for the cuts!

In December 2015, without warning, Government announced the £170 million cut to the Global Sum. This May 2016 the latest Category M clawback of £48 million was announced.

Mike Keen Chief Executive Officer Kent LPC

We knew we could be facing this extremely concerning situation and still hope it may change; a Government, desperate to save money, has come up with an ill-judged plan that will result in even more people visiting over-burdened surgeries or accident and emergency centres, because they no longer have their local pharmacy.

On a broader, cross-sector scale we need our negotiators to work towards recompense for better services including I fervently hope that all the petitions those to meet the needs of an aging population with and media activity will make increasing long term conditions. That means innovation Government realise it is wrong; what I from my LPC, from you and from our negotiators. There cannot predict is how that could play aren’t too many pharmacies; if there are, why are the out and in the meantime we have to public concerned about the potential loss of their local act to protect ourselves against pharmacy? What's wrong is the way that your training and unplanned pharmacy closures driven skills are used and the distribution of some pharmacies. by unmanaged financial attrition, set in This brings into scope the potential for pharmacies to motion by the Treasury. work together in different ways such as some concentrating on the supply function and some on new clinical services and others merging to combine these opportunities. This is a longer term matter and we need to consider what we can do now.

Shorter term I suggest we can look at matters in a few different ways. You are the experts and you may wish to consider: what are we doing free of charge that can be stopped until money is properly found to pay for it. what did we do in the past that we stopped when the NHS proportion of our businesses rose. an area in which you are the experts-commercial matters covering stocks and salaries.

Taking the last first, a number of pharmacies could well see their profits turn negative in the second half of this year when the cuts are levied. Preparing your businesses commercially and addressing staff and stock levels in advance could be time well spent should consumer confidence not return for the Christmas period.

Then one day better times may return.

On what we do free of charge in community pharmacies, I am dismayed that in 2016 we are still delivering some services without charging, cross-funded by an out-dated contractual framework. I have lost count of the number of emergency supplies I make where patients are using me because they could not get an appointment at their surgery; the number of deliveries that go out to patients who could not come to the pharmacy to collect their medicines but cannot bother to be at home when their delivery arrives and the work we put into repeat prescription ordering to save surgeries time. These are valuable services for some patients but I question the numbers we do and a review is needed. When patients complain, send them straight to the Department of Health and their local MP. That will give them something to do!

On public services we used to deliver that have declined, a GP recently said to me “at least you still have your shops to compensate for the worst excesses of the DH.” Community pharmacy majors in advice to its patients and addressing common ailments. It is time to re-visit that and look at ranges we sell that complement services to patients with long term conditions such as diabetes (footcare, glucose testing, healthy eating and weight, advice on what one has to tell DVLA) with a similar approach for other conditions.

Answers to serious problems are never simple and here it may be one of, a mixture of or all of the above, plus reinforcing your procedures checking endorsement claims on prescriptions, getting the best return possible on your advanced services. No one size will fit all.

As an LPC we continue to work hard to keep on-going services such as anticoagulation, public health services (quit smoking, sexual health, drugs and alcohol) palliative care, common ailments and to develop others such as urgent repeat medication out of hours.

However the Global Sum cuts and clawback alone will amount to over a seven percent reduction in remuneration so a trading profit below this amount will see a pharmacy slip into the red.

Urgent action is needed! #MK

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Global Reporting & Learning System (GRLS)

By Pharmacists For Pharmacists

The majority of patients are treated safely and successfully within the pharmacy setting. However, medication-related incidents do occur, no matter how qualified, professional or dedicated the pharmacy staff. Many incidents cause little or no harm, but some can lead to permanent harm or even death. Pharmacists can reduce the number of incidents that occur within their practice by systematically recording and analysing their incidents effectively and planning preventive action to ensure such incidents do not recur. As such, pharmacies should operate a structured and effective error handling system. This must ensure that when an adverse event occurs, the safety of the patient is the primary focus. Full details of all errors should be recorded accurately and comprehensively, including all actions taken to prevent the incident happening again. A policy must also be in place to record and review any ‘near miss’ events and to share the learning outcomes with your full pharmacy team.

Pharmapod enables pharmacies to reduce operating costs of up to £1,500 per annum, by replacing traditional paper based reporting or time consuming systems, which can be labor intensive without giving effective analytics or value necessary for your business. The efficient, intuitive, digital Incident Management system that Pharmapod offers allows pharmacy teams to increase their productivity and provides the necessary visibility for errors and alerts so that effective interventions can be made in a timely manner. Pharmapod are currently working with the NRLS to facilitate the timely release of medication error reports into their system from the Pharmapod system helping pharmacists contribute to a composite risk profile for the healthcare system. Pharmapod helps improve standards within the pharmacy and introduces a culture of transparency, learning and continuous improvement. Users can generate high quality reports which meet the pharmacy’s management and inspection needs. The Pharmapod system is not just about reporting, it is about extracting meaningful insights to help you continuously improve your practice and customer service. It is about removing inefficient processes from your business and saving valuable professional time and money, creating a team focus on excellence.

In order to be in with a chance of winning six month’s FREE subscription to the Pharmapod system please answer the following question:

FREE prize draw

State the amount of savings per annum that using the Pharmapod system could deliver to your pharmacy.

Send your answers to info@pharmapodhq.com, along with your name, the pharmacy name, phone number and address.

The winner will be announced in the next addition of pharmacyTALK, powered by dearPHARMACIST.