Better professional relationships between community pharmacists and GPs are needed for the further development of community pharmacy in Wales, a cross-party committee says.
In its follow-up inquiry on the contribution of community pharmacy to health services, the National Assembly's Health and Social Care Committee welcomed the efforts made to date to develop joint working between community pharmacists and GPs, but found that progress has been slow to improve inter-professional cooperation.
In a letter to the Health Minister, Mark Drakeford AM, the Committee notes that forthcoming public health legislation will seek to tackle some of the issues identified in the Committee's original inquiry into community pharmacy in 2012, but highlights some areas requiring further work.
"Although the Committee welcomes the steps already taken to improve joint-working between community pharmacists and GPs, we remain disappointed at the slow speed of progress" said David Rees AM, Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee.
"We are calling on the Minister to consider establishing a working group between the GP and community pharmacy professions in order to accelerate the process of building consensus between both professions."
The Committee's original report made seven recommendations. Progress in implementing these recommendations has been assessed as part of the Committee's follow-up inquiry. In each case the Committee has provided the Minister with its view on the progress to date on implementing these recommendations. These include the need to:
- further improve communication methods to inform the public about community pharmacy services;
- provide a clearer national lead for the future development of community pharmacy services;
- reach a consensus between professionals and with patients on the extent to which community pharmacies and other health professionals should have access to patient information;
- consider changing the way in which community pharmacies are funded in order to deliver a system that is based on the quality of outcomes as opposed to dispensing volume