Community Pharmacy: Change is all around us

Lisa Banks, Managing Director at NPA Insurance  explains…

The ancient philosopher Heraclitus is credited with the idea that the only constant in life is change.

With winter drawing in, we see this currently in the change of seasons.

The NPA’s centenary celebrations, three years ago, were a reminder of how radically community pharmacy has changed over time. What would previous generations of pharmacists make of the range of support their modern counterparts now provide to keep people well, plus the evolving modes of health care delivery?

I think, for example, of vaccinations, pharmacist prescribing, healthy living champions, dispensing robots, electronic prescriptions, video consultations, GP referrals and point of care tests in pharmacies. Potentially game-changing technologies like pharmaco-genomics could soon be in play too.

At NPA Insurance, we believe we have a duty to play our part in helping pharmacy to continue its evolution as a patient-facing health and wellbeing service, to meet the ever-growing needs of the UK’s ageing population.

In fact, NPAI goes back more than 125 years, to when a group of pharmacists came together to give themselves the protection and confidence needed to go out and serve the public in a fast-changing world.

These days it seems things are changing faster than ever – the supply of antibiotics through Pharmacy First, the initiation of contraception and hypertension diagnosis being just some of the recent developments in England.

We promptly enhanced our standard cover to ensure our policy holders were able to offer these new NHS services, as without indemnity cover, they could not operate.

We have also enhanced cover to indemnify the administration of all vaccinations, including COVID, flu and travel vaccinations to non-pharmacist staff. By allowing technicians and non-pharmacy staff to administer vaccinations, our cover frees up pharmacists so they can perform essential Pharmacy First prescribing duties.

Meanwhile, the NHS is piloting several other initiatives, including the Early Diagnosis of Cancer Screening, which has complex associated risks.

In the face of unprecedented financial challenges, pharmacies are also diversifying into new commercial services – from Botox and Cryotherapy to Ear Microsuction and Weight loss – all of which require specialist cover.

Such additional responsibility comes with additional risk for pharmacies, who need to ensure that their businesses and livelihoods remain adequately insured. This is particularly challenging considering the speed at which their intrinsic role within primary care is evolving.

The NHS Ten Year Plan, to be published in the Spring, could bring further profound change – especially given its headline promise to shift some hospital-based care into communities. The extent to which this implies community pharmacy-based services is as yet unclear, but we should all prepare for the possibility of a substantial transfer of clinical responsibility. The other ‘big shifts’ promised by the Government – from sickness to prevention and from analogue to digital, could also substantially change risk patterns.

Whatever the future holds, at NPAI we will continue to “follow where pharmacy goes”, so that we can continue to be an agent and enabler of change in our sector.

For more information about NPA Insurance’s, contact Insuranceservice@npa.co.uk or call 01727 800 410.