The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) is balloting its members on working to rule amid growing concerns over funding and budget cuts, it has announced.
If passed, thousands of pharmacies across England, Wales and Northern Ireland could take collective action before Christmas, in an unprecedented move for the sector.
The ballot, which will be sent to NPA members ‘within days’, asks pharmacies if they will reduce services, withdraw free deliveries or free medicine dispensing packs, and put NHS leaders on notice that they will cut their hours to contract minimums ‘if the financial situation for the sector does not improve’.
The NPA says that a £1.3 billion funding increase in England is needed ‘to plug the financial blockhole facing community pharmacies’.
Pharmacies will also be asked if they will boycott data collection beyond that required in their contract and consider serving notice on a range of locally contracted services, negotiated directly with local authorities.
A motion included in the ballot reads: ‘Community pharmacies are committed to providing a safe service. But our ability to provide that safe provision will soon be put at risk by continued declining funding, mass pharmacy closures and growing workloads.
‘We are putting the NHS leaders on notice that we cannot guarantee community pharmacy services will remain safe into the future if current depressed funding, pharmacy closures and increasing workload trends continue.’
NPA members will have six weeks to respond.
Paul Rees, NPA chief executive, said the organisation ‘desperately’ wants to work with the new government ‘to unleash the vast potential of pharmacies to deliver the better health in the community that we all want’.
‘But despite big settlements for junior doctors and train drivers since the election there is no sign – as yet – of an end to the chronic real terms cuts that is literally driving dedicated healthcare professionals in pharmacies out of business,’ he said.
‘It pains us to take this step but pharmacies are being pushed to the brink by a decade of real terms cuts that has slashed 40% from their funding.
‘Pharmacies are routinely required to dispense NHS medicines at a loss, 1,500 have been forced to close in the past decade, while others have had to cut hours to try and make ends meet. That is not acceptable and is hitting patients hard,’ he said.
Many general practices are currently ‘working to rule’ under collective action organised by the British Medical Association (BMA). This could include limiting each clinician’s daily appointments and refusing to engage with unfunded pathways.
Mr Rees said that the BMA’s position as both a negotiator, campaigner and organiser of collective action gave general practice ‘a lot of muscle in the space of negotiating with government’.
‘We have a different setup in community pharmacy, so our aim as a National Pharmacy Association is to campaign and to be the voice of the sector and to strengthen the hand of the negotiator,’ he said.
The sector in England is currently awaiting negotiations on the current financial year’s contractual arrangement to commence ‘soon’.
Since the NPA is not a trade union, any ballot outcome will be advisory, it has confirmed.
The announcement comes as the NPA conducts its second ‘day of action’, which aims to highlight the issue of dispensing medicines at a loss.
Pharmacists will also be asked to record any unpaid advice they give to patients, and will ask patients to sign a cross-sector petition of support, which has now surpassed 350,000 signatures.
Community pharmacy teams may also sound an alarm between 9.00am and 9.02am, to highlight the emergency of the situation.
And they might repeat some actions from the previous day of action on 20 July, such as wearing black, blacking out windows and turning out the lights.
‘We feel that what politicians who are arguing for a new deal for community pharmacy want, is us to make a noise so that the Treasury feels minded to release the purse strings,’ Mr Rees said.
‘There are so many calls on the public purse at the moment, so that’s why we feel that the second day of action is critical, and the ballot on working to rule,’ he added.
Responding to the NPA’s plan to ballot its members, a Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) spokesperson said: ‘This government inherited a broken NHS where pharmacies have been neglected for years.
‘Pharmacies are key to making healthcare fit for the future as we shift the focus of the NHS out of hospitals and into the community. We will make better use of pharmacists’ skills, including accelerating the rollout of independent prescribing to improve access to care.’
A version of this story was first published on our sister title The Pharmacist.
