§ Lord Morris of Manchesterasked Her Majesty's Government:
What proposals they have to assist community pharmacists in providing discrete quiet areas in pharmacies for counselling on medicines management, pharmacist prescribing and other services. [HL1704]
§ Lord Hunt of Kings HeathThe Government's programme for pharmacy in the National Health Service in England is set out inPharmacy in the Future—Implementing the NHS Plan published in September 2000, copies of which are available in the Library. In that document we said that we will be discussing with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee changes to the terms of service 23WA and distribution of remuneration for community pharmacy to establish minimum standards and to promote and reward high quality services. The standard of premises and the provision of private consultation areas are likely to be among the issues discussed.
§ Lord Morris of Manchesterasked Her Majesty's Government:
What help they are considering to enable community pharmacists, especially those who are single-handed, to engage an additional pharmacist to assist in the provision of new services; and what material encouragement they will provide to help community pharmacists to undertake the additional training required for such services. [HL1705]
§ Lord Hunt of Kings HeathThere are many opportunities for community pharmacists to become involved in providing additional services on behalf of the National Health Service. Such services may be funded in a variety of ways and pharmacists and pharmacy owners will seek to negotiate payments which appropriately take into account any investment they have made or will need to make in staffing and training.
In addition, the continuing professional development of pharmacists and their staff will be one of the issues we intend to include in discussions with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee in due course about changes to existing terms of service and national remuneration arrangements for community pharmacy in order to promote and reward high quality services.
We will also continue to support the provision of training materials for community pharmacists through our Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education. This will include new training materials to meet new health priorities such as medicines management.