08.06.07

Many of you will know Ian Facer as a longstanding member of the NPA Board.

However when he isn’t at Mallinson House representing community pharmacists he is also running his pharmacy in Preston.  I spoke to Ian about the challenges that both he and his staff have faced over the past two years in getting to grips with the Pharmacy Contract.

“We are generally optimistic about how we have coped with the Contract” said Ian “although initially managing all the extra paperwork for essential services was difficult”.  Ian very much feels that, whilst time consuming, this part of the contract was more a case of writing down what was already being done than doing new activities.  He also added that “if we weren’t doing it already it was probably good business practice to do it”.  As a member of the NPA board Ian also has regular contact with the pharmacists around him and his general impression is that people have overcome the initial hurdles and things are now running smoothly.
 
One area which Ian and his team are still working on is the cultural change around new services such as MUR’s (Medicine Use Reviews).  It would seem that even after two years both patients and GP’s alike are still getting used to the more involved role of the pharmacist in medicines usage.  “We do MUR’s on an opportunistic basis with those patients who we feel we can sell the concept to” commented Ian “we have found taking a more structured approach to appointments to be less successful”.  Of course catching the patients’ in the right mood for an MUR is only half the battle.  I asked Ian about how his local GP’s had responded to receiving MUR forms from the pharmacy.  “In general they are very supportive, mainly because we make sure that we are clear where there are and are not issues” he suggests that by doing this you don’t waste the GP’s time.  Ian didn’t wait for the new contract to come along before building those all important relations with his local surgery.  The pharmacists have already undertaken audit work at the practice, in conjunction with the PCT, around areas of prescribing.  This has meant that practice staff and pharmacists are well acquainted and better able to resolve issues thrown up by MUR’s.  This kind of closer working might not be something that all pharmacies could do, however Ian was very positive about freeing up some pharmacists time to do the work in the practice.

Ian also had some comments about the actual MUR’s themselves, “the key is to understand what an MUR is and not trying to make it something it isn’t”.  In Ian's experience it is probably too early in the day for pharmacists to get right in at the clinical deep end.
 
In the next article Ian goes on to explain how they have restructured the pharmacy and accessed resources in order to meet the challenges of the new contract.

This article was written by Noel Wicks, Pharmacist