![]() The LPC is delighted to announce that Secure NHS Mail accounts will now be available to Pharmacies in our area. Since the NHS re-organisation and the abolition of Connecting for Health the LPC has been working hard behind the scenes to find out how Pharmacies can get access to NHS Mail accounts. Increasingly as more and more communications become electronic we believe that it is vital that pharmacies are included in NHS mail in order to be able to send and receive crucial information within the NHS. Please read the letter below from the CNTW (Cumbria Northumberland Tyne & Wear) area team about how to go about getting yourself and Email account and make sure your pharmacy is connected. Please note the initial roll out will be with CNTW area. DDT area (Durham, Darlington & Tees) will follow after CNTW.
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![]() The government has announced an increase to the NHS prescription charge of 20 pence, to £8.05 per prescription item. This change will come into effect from the 1st April 2014. It was also announced that the prescription charge would again rise by 20 pence in April 2015, to £8.25. The cost of prescription prepayment certificates (PPC) has remained the same for a further year, with the price of a three month PPC at £29.10 and a 12-month PPC at £104. PPCs offer savings for those needing four or more items in three months or more than 13 items in one year. ![]() Pharmacy teams may have read recently about a ‘Call to Action’ on community pharmacy launched this month by NHS England. NHS England is the national commissioner of community pharmacy services and it is currently working on a strategy which will set out how it wants all primary care services to work in the future. Through the pharmacy Call to Action NHS England is seeking views and ideas on how community pharmacy services should be developed in the future as part of that strategy. The Call to Action is extremely important because it is our chance to have a say in our future by telling our national commissioner how we believe our services should develop. Patients, GPs and other organisations will also be giving ideas to NHS England, so it’s crucial that we make our voice heard and that we show the benefits that pharmacies can and could deliver for the NHS. The LPC will be working on its response to the Call to Action in a number of ways, including answering the questions set out by NHS England within it and talking to the local NHS England Area Team about how we think pharmacy services should be developed locally. But we really need your help. To support our response we need to hear examples of how innovative or high quality community pharmacy services have made a real difference to your patients; or of where pharmacies have worked well with other local healthcare providers to support the care they offer. And if you have ideas on how pharmacy services in our area could be improved to better help patients, we want to hear about those too. The LPC will also be sending some of your examples on to PSNC so that they too can use them to support their national response to the Call to Action. You can send your thoughts, ideas and examples to the LPC via our website using the form below or via our contact pages or better still look out for information about events we and the local Area Team will be running in the New Year and come along to talk to us. It will be really important for us to ensure that pharmacy’s views are heard at these events, and your support will be a vital part of that. Dave Carter, Gateshead & South Tyneside LPC Chairman said: “The NHS England Call to Action probably sounds like just another consultation that most pharmacies don’t really need to think about; but that couldn’t be further from the truth. This time, the future of community pharmacy really is at stake. It’s no secret that the NHS has serious financial problems at the moment, and if we don’t tell our national commissioner and our local Area Teams how much we have to offer and what benefits our services can offer the NHS and patients in the future, we risk having services scaled back, rather than developed. Of course the LPC and national organisations will be working very hard to do this on your behalf, but we need all the help we can get on this – the more examples of great practice we have and the more people we have talking about those, the better chance we have of making sure NHS England hears us loudly and clearly and comes up with a primary care strategy that has community pharmacies at its heart.” PSNC Chief Executive, Sue Sharpe said: "The launch of NHS England’s Call to Action on community pharmacy represents an important milestone for the sector in the reformed NHS. It gives us our biggest opportunity yet to shape pharmacy’s future, both by making our own views heard and by finding out more about what users and commissioners of our services think, and it is vital that we take it. PSNC will be responding to the Call to Action to continue to make the case for the greater role we know pharmacies can play in improving patients’ health and making the NHS sustainable, but it will also be important for pharmacy to be heard at a local level. We have provided guidance and support for LPCs to help them to do that and in the New Year we will be hosting a number of local engagement events to seek their views and help them with their local responses and actions. LPCs and PSNC also need help from pharmacies on this important piece of work though. PSNC set out its vision for community pharmacy this year describing how services could be developed across medicines optimisation, public health, self care and supporting independent living, and we need your examples of successful services to support that vision. You can share your thoughts and examples through your LPC or Regional Representative, and of course by talking directly to your local Area Team.” A copy of the consultation document can be obtained by clicking HERE The NHS is 65 years old and in that time, the health system has undergone profound change, with the recent Health and Social Care Act introducing the most wide-ranging reforms since the NHS was founded in 1948. As many of you will know the significant changes are having an impact locally with changes happening on a large scale. Trying to understand the new NHS structure can seem quite diificult. The Kings fund (An independent charity working to improve health and health care in England) have put together the following animation to explain the new structure in a simple manner. Its an interesting animation and worth a watch as it try to simplifiy the complexity of the new NHS structure. The animation gives a whistle-stop tour of where the NHS is now – how the new organisations work and fit together – and explains that the new system is as much a product of politics and circumstance as design. For more details about the Kings fund and their activities visit their website. |
Copies of our older Paper Based News Letters (The LPC News) can be found by clicking below.
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