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A new report commissioned by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has revealed harsh financial realities faced by community pharmacies in England. The report by Professor David Taylor of University College London warned that 1000s of community pharmacy closure might take place by 2024 in England if the sector was not supported with additional funds. At the launch of the report titled 'Protecting UK Public Interests in NHS Community Pharmacy', Prof Taylor said: "There will be several 1,000s of closures over the next few years unless we take appropriate action, which doesn't mean to pour money all over it, but it is to fund appropriately when necessary. "At the moment, if we got a partial collapse in the pharmacy network it would disrupt medicine supply and increase health inequalities… For me, it's missing out on the future development of better and more accessible care, which would be the tragedy of reducing, harming and damaging the pharmacy network unnecessarily."

The pharmacy business is one of the most profitable businesses on the planet. However, the trends are changing and as we move forward in this digital world, we see a transition from traditional business practices to modern and digital business practices that change the whole scenario. In this era of advanced technology, if you don't keep up with the world, you lose the race. It is a fast-paced world where trends change every day, something might work today but it won't work tomorrow, it will be replaced with something better and more efficient whether it is a tool, a technique, a marketing strategy, or a manufacturing process. Everything is being replaced with better alternatives more than ever. Now it is time to realize this change and bring some new guns to your business arsenal. You can employ an auto attendant for your pharmacies, or build a website for online orders and deliveries. Online pharmacies are getting popular a lot and they are the future. Here are a few tips and tricks that you can use to run your pharmacy business like a pro.

In a recent interview with The Telegraph, health secretary Steve Barclay stated that he has asked his officials within DHSC to look at a "pharmacy first" approach to alleviate pressures on A&E departments in order to avoid the widely predicted NHS winter crisis. On the face of it, this a welcome if long overdue recognition that community pharmacy is an essential part of our national healthcare infrastructure alongside our GP and A&E colleagues. But let's not get carried away - we have had lots of praise from politicians in the past which have not then been backed by firm commitments for a sustainable future for the network. Could this be a turning point? I hope so, but I am not confident it will be. I fear this may turn out to be another emergency stop-gap measure which does nothing to secure the long-term viability of the sector in England. The role of community pharmacy during the recent Covid pandemic demonstrated clearly how important we are to ensure people have easy access to essential healthcare support, advice and services. The NHS winter crisis can only be avoided or at least mitigated if the potential of the community pharmacy network to provide more patient care services is unlocked and that Barclay requires you to end pharmacy funding austerity and start investing. The Treasury will no doubt say there is no more money, but what then the alternative other than a NHS winter crisis? And, of course, treating people in secondary care settings is far more costly than community pharmacy based interventions.

A pharmacy group operating in London and the surrounding areas has said it's cliched a financial deal worth £4.25 million with a major global bank to bolster its mergers and acquisitions activity. Osbon Pharmacy Group said on Monday (19 June) that it would use the multi-million-pound funding package from HSBC UK to also invest in bringing accessible and comprehensive medical services closer to the doorstep of Londoners and people of South East England. The family-run business said the new money will open new position which will include opportunities for pharmacists, pharmacy assistants, pharmacy technicians, dispensers, accounts clerks and delivery drivers, taking the company's total headcount to 185. The group, which currently has 26 pharmacies across London and South East England, was established in 2005. The company offers a range of medicine and prescription services as well as offering customary help and advice. It switched to banking with HSBC UK last year as part of a £6.9M refinance package, which saw the business acquire nine pharmacies and takes the total funding provided by HSBC UK to date to £11.1m.

The government, NHS England and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) has begun the negotiations for a new voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing on Thursday (4 May). A new voluntary scheme is expected to take effect from 1 January 2024, replacing the current scheme which came into force in 2019 and ends on 31 December 2023 In their first meeting, the government, NHS England and industry - represented by the ABPI -expected to agree to a shared negotiation aim of working toward a mutually beneficial agreement that supports better patient outcomes and a healthier population, a financially sustainable NHS, and UK economic growth. Health Minister, Will Quince, said: "These negotiations will ensure a new scheme continues to deliver value for money by providing significant savings for our health services, securing access to innovative lifesaving drugs for NHS patients, and helping to reduce waiting times - one of the Prime Minister's 5 priorities. The current voluntary scheme supports investment in NHS services and saves billions of pounds for the NHS, while also promoting innovations and a successful life sciences sector.

The Company Chemists Association (CCA)'s workforce finding showed that by 2024 eight years' worth of growth of the pharmacist workforce will have been funnelled away from community pharmacies. "In 2019, when NHS leaders realised they were unable to find enough GPs to meet the public's needs, they hastily decided to recruit pharmacists and other healthcare professionals to fill the gaps. This was implemented without any corresponding efforts to increase the supply of pharmacists, creating huge shortages," said CCA. "The bulk of the NHS's recruitment drive was paid for using additional money ringfenced by the NHS - the £2.4bn Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS). We estimate over the life course of ARRS funding (2019-2024), the equivalent of eight years of growth in the number of pharmacists in England will have been funnelled directly into primary care at the expense of other sectors. At the current rate, CCA estimate that community pharmacy will have experienced the equivalent of three fallow years by 2024. To ensure the pharmacy network is protected and able to take pressure off other parts of the NHS, there are several urgent measures which must be implemented. Countering the impact of primary care recruitment: Community pharmacists should be commissioned to provide 'packages of care' on behalf of GPs, rather than taking pharmacists away from accessible high street settings.

Labour MP Barry Gardiner has raised concerns that the £645 million cash injection announced by the government for community pharmacy is, in effect, 'frozen funding' for the next two years. Speaking on Tuesday (May 9) on the BBC's Politics Live, Gardiner said funding for community pharmacies "was cut before 2015, then it was frozen and now the latest announcement says that it's going to be frozen for a further two years." He said with a current national contract, which already represented a 25 per cent funding cut in real terms, it was not appropriate to ask for community pharmacy "to take on more work" without adequate support. "I heard the prime minister earlier this morning (May 9) on TV saying 'we are investing more in pharmacies'. "No you are not. You just concluded a contract that says for the next two years it will be absolutely flatlined." He added that "there will be no more money" for community pharmacy and that steeply rising costs due to inflation were "eating into that contract's health". Gardiner said community pharmacists "do a phenomenal job" but regretted that from a total of just 11,000, some 700 pharmacies have been lost due to funding cuts.

Charac, an NHS-integrated one-stop platform for independent community pharmacies, has secured £1 million strategic investment from the Royal Mail Group, enabling its time-saving platform to assist more local pharmacies and patients across the UK to easily manage their prescriptions and consultations online. The company said this new money will enable it to leverage strong levels of trust that pharmacists enjoy within the communities they serve in and will ensure pharmacies remain a cornerstone of vibrant high streets and an invaluable provider of frontline healthcare products and services, including vitally needed consultations. Charac says it is aiming to sign up over 1,000 UK pharmacies in the next 12 months by expanding its geographic footprint beyond current cities, including London, Manchester and Birmingham, and targeting small multiple and independent pharmacies, accounting for almost 40 per cent of the UK's community pharmacy network. The announcement also sees the addition of Stefan Kulik, a managing director at Royal Mail, to the Charac board. Stefan is responsible for leading Royal Mail's expansion into the healthcare industry and brings a breadth of experience, having previously worked in healthcare with companies including Johnson & Johnson.

Making your home both heat and cold-resistant may seem like a daunting task, but there are actually a few simple things you can do to make your home more comfortable no matter the season. In this article, we'll share four ways to make your home both heat and cold-resistant. INSTALL WEATHERSTRIPPING OR CAULKING One of the best ways to make your home more resistant to both heat and cold is to install weatherstripping or caulking around all of the doors and windows. This will help to seal up any cracks or gaps that might let the air escape, making it much easier to keep your home at a comfortable temperature no matter what the weather is like outside. One of the best ways to make your home both heat and cold resistant is to install weatherstripping around all of your doors and windows. This will help to seal in the cool air during the summer and the warm air during the winter, making your home much more comfortable year-round. Another way to improve your home's resistance to extreme temperatures is to caulk any gaps or cracks that you may have in your walls, floors, or ceilings. By doing this, you'll prevent heat or cold from seeping into your home through these tiny openings, saving you money on your energy bills.

PHOENIX UK and the British Heart Foundation has joined hands for a charity partnership to continue the ongoing commitment of improving heart health across the UK. The PHOENIX team have set the donation goal of £20,000 by June 2023 and are set to take on a range of exciting challenges over the course of the next year, such as a Tough Mudder and the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge, all in a bid to raise funds for the heart health charity. Nigel Swift, Managing Director of Rowlands, PHOENIX UK's largest community pharmacy member organisation, commented: "We are thrilled to be partnering with The British Heart Foundation. Its lifesaving research perfectly aligns with our mission across PHOENIX UK - to enable more people to live happy and healthy lives - and so we look forward to raising vital funds and supporting the excellent work of the charity." Hayley Gough, Community Relationship Manager at The British Heart Foundation, added, "It's fantastic to see the team at PHOENIX UK commit to raising so much money for The British Heart Foundation. We can't wait to see all that they achieve and are so grateful for their fundraising efforts."

Rising chronic illnesses and an aging population are threatening to bankrupt the National Health Service, Labour's Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said on October 11. Streeting announced a substantial £1.1 billion injection to strengthen the NHS with the goal of clearing the backlog and introducing additional clinics on evenings and weekends. The frontbencher outlined a reform agenda to ensure NHS is back on its head for the future of healthcare in the UK. Streeting said that a Labour government will not waste "money we don't have"- instead aims to revolutionise the NHS by shifting its focus from hospitals to communities. "Our emphasis is on transitioning from an analogue to a digital framework and prioritising prevention over sickness-oriented healthcare," he noted.

The Criminal Enforcement Unit (CEU) of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) seized a large quantity of suspected illegally traded medicines, including powerful prescription-only medicines, during raids conducted at two residential and two business premises across North Manchester. Officers from the MHRA and Greater Manchester Police carried out searches across two residential addresses in Oldham and Cheetham in the early hours of Wednesday (29 November), and arrested a man in his 20s on "suspicion of conspiracy to supply controlled drugs, breaches of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and money laundering." They also seized thousands of illegal medicines from two business addresses in Bury and Miles Platting, including powerful opioid painkillers and antidepressants, as well as unlicensed versions of erectile dysfunction drugs.

Archie Norman, the chairman of Marks & Spencer said that shoplifting is "creeping in" among the middle class because of faulty self-checkouts. He said that the surge is due to the well-off shoppers being "tempted" to walk out without paying for their items when self-checkouts failed to register their items properly. The M&S chairman told LBC's podcast Money with David Buik and Michael Wilson that shoplifting has become a "global problem". "It's too easy to say it's a cost of living problem. Some of this shoplifting is gangs. Then you get the middle class," Mr Norman said.

The government has announced a freeze to the NHS prescription charges, first time in 12 years, to help people ease with the cost of living and ensure prescription medication remains accessible. Charges for prescriptions will remain at £9.35 for a single charge or £30.25 for a 3-month prescription prepayment certificate (PPC), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said, adding that the measure will help save £17 million. The 12-month PPCs will remain at £108.10 and can be paid for in instalments, meaning people can get all the medicines they need for just over £2 a week, it added. The NHS low income scheme will also help with prescription payments, with free prescriptions for eligible people in certain groups such as pensioners, students, and those who receive state benefits or live in care homes. "The rise in the cost of living has been unavoidable as we face global challenges and the repercussions of Putin's illegal war in Ukraine. While we cannot completely prevent these rises, where we can help, we absolutely will," Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said. "This is why I am freezing prescription charges to help ease some of these pressures and put money back in people's pockets."

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has rejected Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England's proposal on price concessions reform and relief measures to ease pressure on pharmacies. The Committee called the proposal 'insufficient' to meet the sector's needs considering the impact of the current crisis, reflecting on the economic pressures that accelerated through the autumn and winter. The Ministers and other decision-makers have shown their interest in the potential role of community pharmacy, particularly in using a Pharmacy First approach and making use of PGDs and the skills of independent prescribers. But the Committee had made clear to them that without new money this is all a pipedream. "We need an urgent injection of funds into the sector, otherwise we will continue to see a degradation of services and eventual collapse of the network. The Committee is clear that there is no further place for warm words while pharmacy collapses," said PSNC. The Committee reflected that the 5-year CPCF agreement had been based on working together to create the capacity and context necessary to deliver the shift towards greater service delivery. Not only has that capacity-release not happened due to slow progress by Government, but pharmacies have also been burdened with these additional, and insurmountable, challenges.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) survey revealed that 93 per cent of respondents experienced 'at least one month' of negative cash flow across their pharmacy business in 2022. Nine out of 10 pharmacy owners responding to NPA survey said they made a net loss dispensing medicines for the NHS during 2022, for at least one month of the year. According to the poll, 48 per cent of them lost money on this core NHS service for six months or more. 45 per cent said their overall outgoings had exceeded overall income in at least six months of the year. NPA Chair Andrew Lane said: "This survey shows the bleak financial reality facing many independent pharmacies after years of underfunding. Dispensing at a loss and negative cashflow is clearly unsustainable." "This funding crisis must be addressed urgently or pharmacies will fall into a spiral of declining services and ultimately widespread closures, he added. "Tragically, the story is playing out very much in line with independent research commissioned by the NPA last year, which warned of a nationwide financial emergency in our sector."

Amid media speculations that a large pharmacy multiple was putting all its stores at risk of closure, PSNC supremo Janet Morrison said the sector was in crisis and in danger of a significant collapse. Addressing delegates via a video link at Sigma Pharmaceutical's 13th Annual Community Pharmacy Conference held last week (March 4 -9) in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, she said while "a lot of consolidation or sales" would continue, a lot of the smaller, independently-owned community pharmacies - which had to work harder and harder to make ends meet - were just "hanging on in there". "But I don't know how much longer people can go on," she said, adding that the risk of actual closure was rendering the remaining pharmacies so fragile that "they may not be able to pick up the slack of many thousands of patients" who would need repeat prescriptions. "The disruption is frightful and awful. We have got 53 per cent of the population on repeat prescriptions, so that matters." Her comment on the opening day of the conference was a sober reminder that the sector - which relies heavily on income from prescriptions - couldn't afford to "carry on with the current format of a contract and the current amount of money" it was paid to deliver numerous tasks which have been heaped on it to share the burden of a crippling NHS.

A pharmacist based in the East Midlands of England plans to run 150 kilometres during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to raise funds for an international food charity. Shahid Akhtar from Rainworth, Nottinghamshire started running five kilometres each day from March 23 "from about an hour before sunset and the time I can break my fast." So far, the 50-year-old locum pharmacist who used "to own and run a community pharmacy not so long ago", has managed to run 55 kilometres and has already raised a total of £2,173 for the cause. By the end of Ramadan, Shahid aims to exceed his personal target of raising £2,500 to help feed children around the world. He says the money raised through him will go towards providing school meals for children and young people in neglected communities around the world through Charity Right. Shahid will run everyday without consuming any food or water before, during, or immediately after the race. Having never run whilst fasting before, he thinks this will be an "interesting new experience" for him.

There are many reasons why people might need help with their dental problems. Maybe they don't have insurance, or maybe they just don't have the money to go to a dentist. In these cases, the pharmacy can be a great option. Pharmacists can provide a variety of services that can help people with their dental problems, including over-the-counter medications and advice on how to take care of teeth and gums. In this blog post, we will discuss some of the ways that pharmacies can help you take care of your teeth! So, whether you have a toothache, cavities, or bad breath, a pharmacy can be a great place to turn. 1) OVER-COUNTER MEDICATIONS One of the most common services that pharmacies provide is the sale of over-the-counter medications. These medications are designed to be taken for short periods of time and can help with a variety of dental problems. For example, if you have a toothache, you can buy an antiseptic rinse or analgesic gel that can help relieve the pain. If you have bad breath, you can buy mouthwash or breath fresheners that will help mask the odor. And if you have cavities, you can purchase fluoride rinses or gels that can help with decay prevention. If you are worried about the cost of dentists, these medications can be a great way to get the relief you need without breaking the bank. However, it doesn't mean that you should neglect regular dental visits! 2) PROVIDE YOU WITH EDUCATION Another way pharmacy can help you with your dental problems is through advice and education. Pharmacists are trained to provide general information on oral hygiene and health and can help you make educated decisions about which products to buy. They can also provide recommendations on how often you should brush and floss your teeth, as well as advice on diet and lifestyle choices that can help prevent dental problems. In addition, some pharmacies may even have an oral health specialist on staff who can answer any questions you might have about your teeth or gums