JUNE

2016

ISSU

E3

dPinfo

Uniting pharmacy through conversationswww.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 bydearPHARMACIST. We have created this for anyone inpharmacy - whether you are a student of pharmacy, workin hospital, the community, or whatever your connection isto pharmacy - this is the forum for you.

Our aim is to help unite pharmacy through conversations.Conversations will empower us to build pharmacy bysharing issues, celebrations, hurdles, and opinions. Be partof the conversation - membership is free.

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

1. Gain ideas - Hot debates, questions asked, and betterstill test the viability of your own idea. This forum will allowyou to tap into the pulse of all things happening inpharmacy. The more people there are havingconversations, the greater the potential to gain, as well asshare, ideas.

2. Increase knowledge - Let's suppose you're a newbie.You've entered pharmacy and feel like you're flappingaround 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 questionsas you, and many who are answering those questions. Anexcellent place to skip those mistakes, learning fast andavoiding common pitfalls at the same time!

3. Mentorship - Become successful in half the time.Starting a new service, or a study course. There's alwayssomeone else who has had the experience. These onlinementors will give you advice and direction. You may besomeone's mentor too.

4. Build relationships - Pharmacy can only besuccessful by building strong relationships with yourpeers. Forums are an excellent source for relationshipbuilding. Meet other healthcare professionals, friends andfuture colleagues. Networking on the forum takes littleeffort. The simple formula is to stay active in the forum,network and engage with other members. Lend a helpinghand and you'll automatically build those relationships.

5. Establish expertise - Look for conversations that dealwith your particular niche, or start one yourself. Makingeveryone aware of your expertise, and providing otherswith solutions to their problems. By doing this, you neverknow what may come your way.

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

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

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Connect2PharmaPlan B andConnect2pharma

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 analternative source of revenue.

Plan B is the answer. Plan B is based on the strength of community pharmacy as a professional retailhealthcare environment and relies on the capability of the community pharmacy team to engage withpatients to offer suitable treatments. People need and want better healthcare. The NHS is stretched tobreaking 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 healthcareneeds. The team will actively engage the customer, discuss elements of their disease and establish areaswhere there is a need and offer a parcel of care. It is easier to describe this through a worked example:

The point is simple – rather than wait for customers to complain about dry skin ontheir feet or tired and itchy eyes – go out and find them – and have a well-designedparcel 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 tomanage other aspects of diabetes care – and they may find it easier to simply refer the patient to you.

KNOWLEDGE

In depth disease and complication knowledge

• 80% of patients with diabetes have early signsof 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 – offera dry eye treatment program

£170m

6% cutNHS England has indicated they want a 6% cut in theglobal sum which will mean a fall of £170m in funding forCommunity pharmacies in England.

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

Connect2pharma (C2P)

Connect2pharma acts as a unique interface between manufacturers who produceinnovative products and community pharmacy that needs to deliver new parcels ofcare 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 findit difficult to get their products to the people who would benefit.

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

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

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

How we work

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

Inspectsolesee mirror to inspect the sole

of your feet

MoisturiseAllpresan foam cream speciallydeveloped for diabetic feet

Preventspecialist diabetic socks

@connect2pharma

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

[KC] To provide a single point of contact whereCommissioners across Kent can go to access a network ofcommitted pharmacies who are both able and willing toprovide public health services to a high and consistentstandard.

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

[SK] Why is it important for pharmacists to unite and formgroups such as yours?

[AP] Competition is greater than ever before, and pharmacycontractors have historically worked in isolation. But withadvances in technology, advances in the healthcare service,and the higher expectations being set from patients, it isbecoming harder to meet the healthcare needs of ourcommunities. By coming together, we will create a jointpharmacy network. This is what commissioners want. Wewould therefore be able to go directly to public health andNHSE, and tender for services.

Whether you’re a multiple or an independent contractor, weare part of the pharmacy profession. We need to put ourprofessional qualifications and knowledge to best use, and thefuture of doing this is through commissioned services.

[KC] Commissioners are increasingly looking to contract withone provider for delivery of a service rather than going downthe LPC route and contracting individually with eachpharmacy. This means that pharmacies risk being sub-contractors with no input into the design, and payments, forservices.

[SK] What advantage would it make to contractors to joinyour group? Specifically answering how they will benefit byjoining to protect them from the 3000 closures set out byDOH.

[KC] KCP LLP represents 130 pharmacies across Kent andcan contract with Public Health, CCGs etc to provideservices and to manage the provision of those services byits members. We have already won the sexual healthcontract for pharmacy in Kent and plan to tender for moreservices in the future as they come out. If pharmacies are toweather the storm of cuts on the horizon, then they need tomaximise service income in every form and must certainlynot be excluded from any services.

[AP] By uniting, we can, share best practice, share resources,costs, and become social with our colleagues. We need towork together to get fair value for products and services.This overall will result in increased professionalism for thesector, better patient care, increased revenue for us all.Other benefits to being part of the Salveo Health groupinclude: Invitations to training events, Training forcommissioned services, Innovative services created bySalveo Health that you can deliver privately, and mostimportantly a network of pharmacy teams to which weshare best practice and in turn help us all maximise ourbusiness potential.

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

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

[AP] Salveo Health Membership is open to everyone, andit’s free to join. You can email your interest to me directlyon amish1985@gmail.com, and I will send over themembership forms.

[SK] Thank you for sharing what your groups have tooffer. I am hoping that all contractors in Kent & Medwaywill join the great work you are both doing.

Amish Patel [AP],Director of SalveoHealth Ltd

Kevin Cottrell [KC],Chair of KCP LLP

As I write this, I realise that we are half way through 2016. Six months have past since the 17th December 2015, when thegovernment decided to cut our funds! I’m not sure about you, but that time has just disappeared. To think it will be the samelength 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 everycommunity 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 fundingcuts. In this journey during the last six months, I’ve had in depth conversations with colleagues that have great expertise andexperience. All of them came out with one common solution, or should I say problem… Pharmacy is not united! It’s timeto 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 differentqualities into my pharmacy. Why both? I have asked myself that recently too. Currently I am Vice Chair of Kent LPC. So I amalso 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.

Unitingpharmacythroughconversations

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Is unity the NHS cuts survival tool? Interview by Sunil Kochhar [SK], Vice Chair of Kent LPC

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On a broader, cross-sector scale we need our negotiatorsto work towards recompense for better services includingthose to meet the needs of an aging population withincreasing long term conditions. That means innovationfrom my LPC, from you and from our negotiators. Therearen’t too many pharmacies; if there are, why are thepublic concerned about the potential loss of their localpharmacy? What's wrong is the way that your training andskills are used and the distribution of some pharmacies.This brings into scope the potential for pharmacies towork together in different ways such as someconcentrating on the supply function and some on newclinical services and others merging to combine theseopportunities. This is a longer term matter and we need toconsider 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 wishto 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 ofthis year when the cuts are levied. Preparing your businesses commercially and addressing staff and stocklevels 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 amdismayed that in 2016 we are still delivering some serviceswithout charging, cross-funded by an out-dated contractualframework. I have lost count of the number of emergencysupplies I make where patients are using me because they couldnot get an appointment at their surgery; the number of deliveriesthat go out to patients who could not come to the pharmacy tocollect their medicines but cannot bother to be at home whentheir delivery arrives and the work we put into repeatprescription ordering to save surgeries time. These are valuableservices for some patients but I question the numbers we do anda review is needed. When patients complain, send them straightto the Department of Health and their local MP. That will givethem something to do!

On public services we used to deliver that have declined, a GPrecently said to me “at least you still have your shops tocompensate for the worst excesses of the DH.” Communitypharmacy majors in advice to its patients and addressingcommon ailments. It is time to re-visit that and look at ranges wesell that complement services to patients with long termconditions such as diabetes (footcare, glucose testing, healthyeating and weight, advice on what one has to tell DVLA) with asimilar approach for other conditions.

Answers to serious problems are neversimple and here it may be one of, a mixtureof or all of the above, plus reinforcing yourprocedures checking endorsement claimson prescriptions, getting the best returnpossible on your advanced services. Noone size will fit all.

As an LPC we continue to work hard tokeep on-going services such asanticoagulation, public health services(quit smoking, sexual health, drugs andalcohol) palliative care, common ailmentsand to develop others such as urgentrepeat medication out of hours.

However the Global Sum cuts andclawback alone will amount to over aseven percent reduction in remunerationso a trading profit below this amount willsee a pharmacy slip into the red.

Urgent action is needed!

#MK

I fervently hope that all the petitionsand media activity will make

Government realise it is wrong; what Icannot predict is how that could playout and in the meantime we have toact to protect ourselves against

unplanned pharmacy closures drivenby unmanaged financial attrition, set in

motion by the Treasury.

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

Preparing for the cuts!In December 2015, without warning, Governmentannounced 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 OfficerKent LPC

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Themajority of patients are treated safely and successfully within the pharmacy setting. However,medication-related incidents do occur, no matter how qualified, professional or dedicated thepharmacy staff. Many incidents cause little or no harm, but some can lead to permanent harm oreven death. Pharmacists can reduce the number of incidents that occur within their practice bysystematically recording and analysing their incidents effectively and planning preventive action toensure such incidents do not recur. As such, pharmacies should operate a structured and effectiveerror handling system. This must ensure that when an adverse event occurs, the safety of the patientis 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 torecord and review any ‘near miss’ events and to share the learning outcomes with your full pharmacyteam.

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