Consultation: Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment 2018
What is a Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA)?
Hertfordshire Health and Wellbeing Board (HWB) is hosted by Hertfordshire County Council. The government requires all Health and Wellbeing Boards to produce an assessment of pharmaceutical services in its area at least every three years. The next assessment for Hertfordshire is due by the end of March 2018. This document is called the Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment. The HWB is consulting on this document and would like to hear your views on pharmaceutical services in Hertfordshire.
What are pharmaceutical services?
Pharmaceutical services are one of the many services currently provided under the NHS by community pharmacies and include:
- dispensing of medicines and appliances on prescription
- providing advice to the public on medicines, coping with ill health or general health and wellbeing
- receiving waste medicines for safe destruction
Some pharmaceutical services may be provided by dispensing GP practices or dispensing appliance contractors. There are thirteen dispensing GP practices in Hertfordshire.
Who is being consulted and why?
Hertfordshire HWB is required to consult with any patient and consumer who lives in the HWB area or community group within the area who have an interest in the provision of pharmaceutical services. It is assumed that everyone living in Hertfordshire may require services provided by community pharmacies and appliance contractors. They are therefore consulting with the entire resident population of the HWB area and welcome the views from anyone living in the HWB area or anyone providing pharmaceutical services in the HWB area.
Community pharmacies in Hertfordshire
There are 21.5 community pharmacies per 100,000 population in Hertfordshire. This figure is higher than the 18.8 East of England average and identical to the national average of 21.5.
There are 123 community pharmacies (49%) in Hertfordshire open on weekday evenings and 226 open on Saturdays (90%). There are 56 open on Sundays (22%).
All residents in Hertfordshire have an average drive travel time to a community pharmacy of not more than 15 minutes and 75.5% are within a 15 minute walk to a community pharmacy.
Feedback on pharmaceutical services
Views of pharmacy service users were gained from a questionnaire circulated for comments from the general public in spring 2017.
From the 1,390 responses received from the public questionnaire:
- 76% have a regular or preferred pharmacy that they visit
- 64% visit their pharmacy once a month or more
- 49% rated as important that the pharmacy is close to their GP surgery; 75% that the pharmacy is close to their home; 50% that the pharmacy has friendly staff
- 83% of respondents report no difficulties travelling to their pharmacy
- Of those who expressed a difficulty in travelling to their pharmacy 24% had parking difficulties and 49% had problems with the location. However, it should be noted that respondent numbers are low for this particular question.
- 73% report having a journey time of no more than 15 minutes
- 48% walk to their community pharmacy; 43% use a car; 5% use public transport; 2% use a bicycle
- 66% indicated that they used pharmacies up to every month for the purchase of over-the-counter medicines
- Results indicate that there is no clear preferred time to visit, with respondents equally split between morning and afternoon options. Only 6% prefer to visit between 6pm and 8pm and 1% after 8pm weekdays.
- The majority of respondents had “no most convenient day” (53%) or “time” (52%) to visit the pharmacy. Only 8% of respondents indicate that they prefer to visit on Saturday and less than 1% on Sunday
- Less than 10% of respondents indicate that they have used an internet pharmacy.
Hertfordshire is well-served with community pharmacies with the rate of provision higher than the East of England average and identical to the national average.
There is excellent access to a range of services provided by community pharmacies.
As a result, HWB do not believe there are any gaps in provision of necessary pharmaceutical services in Hertfordshire.
But we would like to know your views as a resident of Hertfordshire HWB area.
Hertfordshire Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment Report 2018
You can download a copy of the Report here
