Community Pharmacy in the NHS Recovery Plan

Published: 26/08/21

Yesterday Scottish Government published "The NHS Recovery Plan" which sets out key ambitions and actions to be developed and delivered now and over the next 5 years in order to address the backlog in care and meet the ongoing healthcare needs for people across Scotland.

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Here are some of the key points broken down within Primary and Community Care:

• The plan states that it will aim to increase wider primary care capacity as a priority. Public Health Scotland (PHS) will support this by imminently publishing updated guidance for primary care settings covering key issues such as physical distancing requirements, access for patients and infection prevention control. Further supporting this there is also an aim to increase primary care spending by at least 25% by the end of this parliament.

• Community pharmacies who are acting as the first port of call, will be a key provider in unscheduled care, supporting the recovery of the NHS. With the introduction of NHS Pharmacy First Scotland service in July 2020, backed by £7.5 million of investment this year, meaning that CPs can help with a range of common clinical condition treatments. To support this there will be an increase in investment by £2.5 million in 2022/23 to enable community pharmacies to provide an even wider range of advice and, treatment, avoiding unnecessary GP and out of hours appointments.

• Over the next year there will be developments that introduce a new pharmacy woman's health and wellbeing service through our public health services. This new service will provide greater access to advice, guidance and if appropriate treatments in areas such conception, contraception and menopause.

• In the second year of this plan we will also establish a community pharmacy hospital discharge and medicines reconciliation service to help speed up the process for people being discharged from hospital.

• There are also developments with new digital solutions such as ePrescribing and eDispensing to make the prescribing process paperless which will free up capacity for healthcare professionals so that they can see more patients.

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