Clare Howard, NHS England’s Deputy Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, outlines the next steps for the Improving Health and Patient Care through Community Pharmacy – a call to action which has received a hugely positive response:

The Improving Health and Patient Care through Community Pharmacy – a call to action closed on 18 March. But in many ways it was really just the end of the beginning. So, what response did we get and what happens now?

Well, firstly we have been overwhelmed by the number of Area Team events and local events that were organised and the formal responses that we have received. We have had over 100 written responses and over 700 submissions to the website. Thank you to all of you that took the time to put your thoughts together and tell us how you think community pharmacy could be better organised to meet the needs of patients in the future.

We are currently engaging with patients to understand their views and there will be 10 focus groups happening over the next few weeks. We are also working on our patient questionnaires and with our third sector partners.

As with the GP call to action, your submissions will now be independently evaluated and reported back to our team working on the Call To Action and Community Pharmacy Strategy. We are also working with the urgent and emergency care review team to make sure the community pharmacy contribution to the urgent and emergency care review links coherently with the overall community pharmacy strategy.

Finally on a personal note, I would like to thank all the Area Teams and Pharmacy organisations and Pharmacy teams that got behind the work and gave us your time, energy and enthusiasm to provide us with a significant body of responses upon which to stat to develop the strategy. It’s a great start.