8.1 The
Board considered a draft of the 2017 East Sussex Pharmaceutical
Needs Assessment.
8.2 In
response to questions from the Board the following answers were
provided:
- The
Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) is a comprehensive assessment
of need for everybody and so does not mention specifically the
needs of children and young people; the majority of pharmacy users
tend to be older people. There is, however, mention of individual
projects that are aimed at young people, for example, Chlamydia
testing for 15-25 year olds, free emergency hormonal contraception
for people under 25 and free pregnancy testing for people under
25. There are also details of community
pharmacy providing tailored advice to parents and children for
illnesses and ailments such as eczema and coughs/
colds.
- The PNA
emphasises the importance of community pharmacies, which are a
vital part of the East Sussex Better Together (ESBT) medicines
optimisation workstream. The PNA will help ESBT to target areas for
improvement in existing pharmacies and for NHS England to consider
new market entries.
- The PNA
indicates that a small number of rural areas are more than two
hours away from a pharmacy by public transport on weekends and
public holidays, which can make accessing medicine over the weekend
difficult for some patients. East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust
(ESHT) hospital pharmacies provide sufficient medicine to patients
being discharged to last them over the weekend period when local
pharmacy access is more difficult.
- Pharmacies
are independent businesses and as such are paid by NHS England to
stay open on days where it would be uneconomical for them to do so,
for example, on public holidays and Sundays they are paid
£250 per hour. In larger rural areas it is also difficult to
encourage pharmacies to be open for 100 hours a week over seven
days, and those that do are usually in supermarkets and restricted
by its Sunday opening hours. The pharmacy budget is a global sum
and is apportioned to provide the best possible spread of pharmacy
access for residents in East Sussex; paying pharmacies in rural
areas to stay open beyond the hours they do now would, therefore,
impact pharmacy availability elsewhere.
- Pharmacies
are encouraged to maintain an online presence. NHS Choices contains
a profile of all pharmacies, such as its hours of opening and
services it provides. Since April 2017, as part of the new Quality
Service for Communities, pharmacies qualified for a payment if
their NHS Choice profile was updated – 9,700 0f 11,500
pharmacies submitted up-to-date profiles to qualify for this
payment. Community pharmacies are also paid to include six health
promotion campaigns per year in their window.
36.3 The Board
RESOLVED to:
1) approve the final draft of the 2017 East Sussex
Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment and agree to its publication;
and
2) recommend that the final draft emphasises
the pharmaceutical needs of and available pharmaceutical services
for children and young people.