Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid today delivered a speech on healthcare reform, highlighting a range of challenges facing the NHS and the need to support prevention, enhance personalised care and ensure sustainable performance.
Responding to the speech, RPS England Chair Thorrun Govind said: “Pharmacists working across the health service will be crucial to supporting the NHS recovery and how we transform services for the future.
“I welcomed the Health Secretary’s recognition that pharmacists must be at the heart of prevention and helping people stay healthy.
“Medicines are the most common health intervention in the NHS and pharmacists will be central to supporting ambitions around personalised care, shared decision-making and ensuring best value for taxpayers.
“We also know that pharmacists will play a leading role personalised medicines and how we can identify and treat disease.
“There is a clear case for pharmacists to help support people living with long-term conditions so that we can manage growing demand on the NHS. This must include fresh thinking regarding service commissioning, including making the most of pharmacist independent prescribers.
“With a range of reviews currently underway in Government and the NHS, it is essential that future reforms create the right incentives across primary and secondary care to drive integration and collaboration.
“We also need to see sustained investment in the pharmacy workforce, supporting and upskilling existing staff and ensuring a pipeline of pharmacists for the future, as well as the accelerated roll-out of read-write access to patient records for pharmacists wherever they may work.”
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