PSNC held a webinar on the Wright Review on 10th August, you can watch this on demand here. They have issued four questions for consultation about the way forward.

The NPA will be submitting a written response to the PSNC itself, and is encouraging independent community pharmacy owners to do likewise to ensure that all the voices of the independent sector are heard. The NPA response on the four next step questions regarding the Wright Review has been published as guidance for our NPA member-contractors as they prepare to respond to the PSNC request. We ask that you find the time to personally review the four questions and engage fully with this important review.

 

We would encourage NPA members to submit their views on these four questions to us to help shape the final NPA position. This can be done by emailing independentsvoice@npa.co.uk before 24th August.

The deadline for making final submissions to the PSNC is 31st August.

 

A short message from NPA Chair, Andrew Lane about the Wright Review:

 

The NPA will be submitting a written response to the PSNC itself, and is encouraging independent community pharmacy owners to do likewise to ensure that all the voices of the independent sector are heard:

The NPA view on the Wright review is that:

  • There needs to be change and the NPA wants to be an active participant in influencing and supporting that process. We recognise this review is a sincere attempt to create a more coherent, end-to-end system of representation and support, connecting local and national leadership.
  • We can see merit in the vast majority of the recommendations made in the report, but we believe that key questions about the future of pharmacy representation & support in England remain unanswered by the Wright Review recommendations published in June.
  • At the outset of this process, the NPA set out a number of principles we wished to see applied to any future structure. Uppermost of these are continued investment in local leadership and improved accountability. We also emphasise the importance of equitable governance, to ensure that the voices both of independents and multiples are fairly represented in local and national leadership. Whatever structure emerges needs to allow the distinctive voice of independents to be heard, and must work for everyone, big and small (these principles are set out in more detail below).
  • The Wright Review recommendations address some of the principles we laid out, but the current level of detail is not enough to assure us on all the matters that concern independent contractors. We need to be clear how a vision and strategy for the sector will be developed.
  • If adopted, these recommendations will amount to a radical overhaul of how community pharmacy is represented and supported. We recognise the need for change, but the details must be properly thought through before embarking down this road. There must be ample opportunity to examine the implications and unintended consequences – but at the same time we must ensure that the sector does not become unduly focused on internal structures. We must also ensure that there is a suitable process for approving any changes that occur in a way that delivers legitimacy any new structures.Early in this process, we established eight principles that we intended to measure any proposal against in order to determine whether it meets the needs of our members:
  1. Increase the capacity for local service development and implementation; the system at local level must be skilful in representation, efficient and responsive to change
  2. Streamline the network of LPCs (ideally to reflect NHS structures), provided a thorough analysis shows that this would be cost-releasing, so that savings can be re- invested in local support and representation
  3. Reform the PSNC mandate and accountabilities, focusing PSNC more sharply on negotiation of the national contractual framework
  4. Invest in a local leadership development programme which includes PCN Pharmacy Leads; and potentially provides backfill funds to enable attendance at PCN meetings
  5. Redefine what ‘good looks like’ for a contractor in terms of what they get for their levy investment into PSNC and LPC; and improving transparency and accountability in relation to its expenditure
  6. Ensure that any forms of governance evenly and collectively serve all the contractor stakeholders in community pharmacy, i.e. independents and multiples
  7. Pilot any changes before full-scale implementation and learn from early pathfinders
  8. Consider how service development and innovation is handled by the sector. We think there could be merit in a new regionalised support structure, plus a national Community Pharmacy Service Development Unit. Both would serve, not direct, local pharmacy representatives. This idea requires further thought and we will be taking soundings from NPA members, LPCs and other stakeholders about its desirability and feasibility.