David Gallier-Harris, National Pharmacy Board campaign pledge

What do I mean by moving forward together? I mean recognising that community pharmacy is in crisis and we must work collectively to change our future. The savage cuts to funding with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) taking a scythe to our income in 2017 mean many are facing an existential crisis. 2018 will be a make-or-break year for community pharmacy. We need our RPS to immediately recognise this and work with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC), trade associations and unions to deliver a solution for members.

The solution is to find new ways of working that deliver a better deal for the NHS as a whole and which fully utilise our pharmacy teams’ expertise. We can only do this with a fundamental shift in funding mechanisms and funding levels. We need new ideas and we need buy-in from across the community pharmacy spectrum. The RPS must provide the leadership, facilitating the dialogue and collaboration. We need a single public message, delivered to ministers, the wider NHS and patients showcasing what we can do.

We need to change how we work in community pharmacy so that the safe supply function is maintained, wrapped in a patient-centric service element with medicines optimisation at its heart. This will add value for both patients and the NHS. Additionally, a service-based element to the pharmacy contract is a huge opportunity. We must grasp this seismic change in how community pharmacy operates and open the door to a wealth of new opportunities.

As the service element of the PCFC develops, the RPS has a crucial role to play in supporting us, the members, to implement the significant changes in how we work and the services we can offer to patients. The organisation must be fully engaged with new contractual proposals emanating from PSNC/DHSC negotiations from the start. It must maintain an evidence base for services to demonstrate benefit and champion community pharmacy to ministers, DHSC and every significant external stakeholder. It must be ready to deliver the resources members need to help them embrace opportunities.

We are at the start of the journey. There are serious hurdles to be overcome. The RPS must prove that we are the solution to the wider NHS crisis — not an expensive legacy mechanism for delivering medication to patients.

This is the agenda I will pursue and if elected, will challenge the English Pharmacy Board to deliver.

David Gallier-Harris, England