How is ‘Pharmacy First' pushing us to safeguard our local pharmacies?
Santosh Sahu, CEO and Founder of Charac, discusses the Government's approaching ‘Pharmacy First' proposal and what this means for under-resourced pharmacies.
With the UK facing a national health crisis of an unprecedented scale, the Government's ‘Pharmacy First' proposal has been touted as the solution to relieving pressure from struggling GPs, with pharmacies across the country to share the burden of growing patient waitlists. To facilitate this, the Government is increasing the powers of pharmacists, including the number of ailments they can prescribe for. However, many pharmacies themselves are under-resourced, leaving them unable to take on even a portion of the 7.7 million strong backlog, and will need to find an effective way to manage these impending and increasing responsibilities. The problem stands: how can pharmacies safeguard themselves to weather the coming storm, and position themselves so their business operations thrive going forwards?
While the Government has pledged £645m to community pharmacies to enable the delivery of ‘Pharmacy First