Consultation begins on pharmacy 5 year plan

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman says consultation on the plan outlining the future of pharmacy services in New Zealand gets underway today.

“The role of pharmacists is evolving and we need to ensure that we have a plan in place to respond and harness these changes,” says Dr Coleman.

“Pharmacy has the ability to provide more care to people with long term conditions and older patients so they can live longer healthier lives away from hospitals and in their own communities.

“This plan helps set out how we can make better use of the knowledge and skills of our pharmacy workforce.

“It will help ensure pharmacy services are better integrated with other health professionals in multi-disciplinary teams.”

The Draft Pharmacy Action Plan 2015-2020 sets out a direction for pharmacy services under five themes:

• Population and personal health - pharmacists providing public health interventions that enable people to stay well
• Pharmacist clinical services - pharmacists working collaboratively as part of an integrated team to deliver a range of medicines management services
• Acute demand management – patients having equitable and timely access to self-care advice, treatment of minor ailments, acute demand triage and appropriate referral
• Dispensing and supply services - more effective use of the pharmacy workforce and technology to streamline the dispensing and supply process
• Prescribing pharmacists - prescribing pharmacists contributing to better health outcomes by improving medicines management.

A copy of the draft plan can be downloaded from the Ministry of Health website, here. The document will be available for feedback until 23 November 2015.