The PDA has undertaken significant activity to challenge unnecessary full or part-day pharmacy closures across the UK. The PDA believe that not only does the practice represent significant risk for patient harm, but it damages the reputation of pharmacy, undermines the chances of higher priority funding from governments, and discourages new entrants to the profession/existing practitioners from choosing to work in the sector.
As part of campaigning work undertaken by the PDA, data is requested from the NHS under the powers within the Freedom of Information Act about a range of issues including reported pharmacy closures. In Scotland this has been received from each of the NHS Health Boards and observers may have seen that this has enabled the PDA to identify appropriate information about the situation there.
This level of information can only be identified by having the official data, and when one Health Board initially refused to release the information an appeal by the PDA to the Scottish Data Commissioner resulted in an instruction to the Health Board that they must make a full disclosure as requested. Similarly, the PDA asks NHS England to share their data of reported closures as a matter of public interest.
Across the UK, it is the NHS which funds the community pharmacy contracts and as it is a requirement of the NHS terms of service for community pharmacies to report each time that closures occur. Therefore many may have the reasonable expectation that the NHS would be monitoring this critical data already, as a key indicator of how their contract was being delivered.
With the PDA’s ongoing campaigns to protect patients by ending unnecessary closures, and to champion communities’ access to a pharmacist as part of the Safer Pharmacies Charter, one might expect NHS England would be monitoring this issue even more closely.
However, despite multiple requests, NHS England has failed to provide the data, and therefore the PDA has been unable to carry out detailed analysis of this concerning situation to the level which has been possible for Scotland. As is appropriate when a public body fails to adequately respond to a Freedom of Information request, the PDA has escalated the matter to the Information Commissioner to investigate.
The PDA still hope that NHSE will provide the data as soon as possible, hopefully before the ICO has to investigate, however if that fails to happen it will be for the ICO to determine what happens next.
Learn More
- Data in Scotland shows CCA members more likely to close
- The PDA call on Humza Yousaf to take action on closures.
- Experience of Locum pharmacists
- PDA open letter to Humza Yousaf, and others, about patient safety
- Locums told accept lower rates or be cancelled
- Closures damage pharmacy
- Comment on evidence provided to the Health Select Committee
- Safer Pharmacies Survey 2021
- Systemic closure of pharmacies
- Some business not reporting closures to the NHS
- Closures: Pharmacist concerns about patient harm and impact on the NHS
- PDA launches online reporting tool to gather data on pharmacy closures
- Pharmacists highlight more unscheduled pharmacy closures
- Member Voice: The myth of pharmacist shortages
- The workforce impact of pharmacists working in Primary Care – what does the data tell us?
- Pharmacists are being asked to switch pharmacies during the day
- Community Pharmacy NHS Contractual Breach Concerns
- Employers’ report into pharmacy workforce challenges does not address their basic responsibilities
- Inclusion on shortage occupation list demonstrates how there is something broken in regards to pharmacist pay rates
- Evidence of some employers crying wolf over shortages during the pandemic
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