C’mon, Hunt, it’s time to come up with a real plan for pharmacy

The Pharmacist has uncovered the first comprehensive insight into how the cuts are biting- and it makes for depressing reading. 

In the latest issue, we can reveal that nearly 2,000 pharmacies are at risk of closure and 12,000 pharmacy workers could lose their jobs. This is, of course, pharmacists' prediction, but it indicates a sector in dire despair. 

When it comes to predicting closures, the Government has been burying its head in the sand. Last year, former pharmacy minister Alistair Burt predicted that between 1,000 and 3,000 English pharmacies could close as a result of the cuts, but he then backtracked. The Department of Health's impact assessment makes a number of calculations, with the 'worst-case scenario' that 1,000 are forced to close- then concludes that it 'cannot know for certain how the market will react'.

You'd like to think the Government would properly assess the impact before it starts slashing the pharmacy budget. But then health secretary Jeremy Hunt has not held back about his intentions, making it clear he sees 'clusters' as a waste of NHS money. 

But what is Hunt's real strategy for pharmacy? Does he, as some critics suggest, want to see an end to community pharmacy? Our interview with NHS England's heads of pharmacy suggests the Government is pushing for a more clinical profession. So will the sector only be used to prop up general practice?

For this issue of The Pharmacist we show how Hunt's legacy is likely to be. But it's not set in stone. At a time when the whole NHS to reaching boiling point, my appeal to him would be to put pharmacists' true value to good use. If he doesn't, as one pharmacist put it, his legacy will be that he had a resource that could have answered his problems, and didn't even realise what it was.