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By Shilpa Shah, chief executive of Community Pharmacy North East London

After months of waiting, we have finally had the announcement of a new contractual framework for England’s pharmacies.  Numerous organisations were involved in these talks: Community Pharmacy England (CPE), the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England (now defunct) and most importantly the Treasury.

A large part of pharmacy’s lobbying efforts over the past several years has consisted of reaching out to decision-makers and showcasing the great work we do. For me this is vital work, even outside of the context of contract discussions – and so I’ve been asking myself what we can do to support CPE in telling our story.

One of the best things we can do is to stand united and share the same message from all contractors. The best way to do this is to work with your local pharmaceutical committee (LPC) and CPE to ensure the messaging is consistent. Resources on the CPE website can help with this.

I have had a few meetings with the Rt. Hon. Wes Streeting, secretary of state for health and social care. He may be an MP in North East London, but we still had to be persistent in sending him emails and making phone calls soon after the general election to ensure he visited a local pharmacy in his constituency. We had first taken him to a pharmacy when he was the shadow health secretary. Each time, the thing I’ve noticed most is how much he listens to the contractor. 

Since those first visits he has met with me regularly. We have shared with him some of the concerns we have around funding and offered quick and easy solutions that would really help primary care and ease the workload pressures in community pharmacy.

So, what can you do?

Use template letters on the CPE website and invite the MP that covers your locality. This can often be more powerful if you also live in the same constituency but don’t worry if you don’t. Your patients are their constituents, and your business is in their constituency.

Be persistent. Email them and follow up with another email two weeks later, if you have not had a response. Call their office too.

Invite your Community Pharmacy Local team (LPC). as they will have local (and national) statistics that they can share.

Share solutions – not just challenges. For example, if you are talking about Pharmacy First and the lack of referrals from your local GP surgeries, a solution to that could be to make the service a walk-in service or for the Integrated Care Board (ICB) to invest in an integrated IT systems. This would still free up capacity in general practice and stop people going to A&E. 

Give examples of great care. By this I mean times when your intervention has really helped a patient – who is likely to be one of their constituents. For example, if you’ve carried out the hypertension case finding service and found that somebody had extremely high blood pressure and needed urgent referral to the GP or to A&E, that intervention would most definitely have stopped that person from having a heart attack or a stroke. Not only has that early intervention helped the patient have a better future but it’s also stopped that patient costing the NHS a lot more money in the future.

Talk to your MP about locally commissioned services.  Inform thatm about the ones your ICB or local authority have commissioned – and the value that they add to residents.

Another hot topic is the number of out-of-stock medications at present. Some constituents write to their MP when they are having difficulty in getting their medication. A visit from your MP is a good opportunity for you, as a contractor, to lobby for pharmacists to be able to make changes so that the patient isn’t having to go to numerous pharmacies to try and obtain their medication.

And so that you are not having to spend time calling around or trying to get through to the GP to get the prescription changed.

Most importantly no business should have to lose money to subsidise the NHS, so this is a good time to talk about the pricing structure of medication for community pharmacy.

The points above are meant to help you get started. Be yourself, share your experiences and remember that lobbying doesn’t just happen when a new contract is in the offing. Whatever you talk about, it is important to have the support of your local MP, especially now that NHSE’s functions are being absorbed into government.

MPs need to hear from frontline colleagues on what the problems are, possible solutions and just how valuable community pharmacy is to its local community.