The community pharmacy Call to Action (CTA), Improving health and patient care through Community Pharmacy – a Call to Action, was run by NHS England, between December 2013 and March 2014.

The CTA was essentially a consultation, and was designed to gather views from pharmacy, patients and others with an interest in the sector on what community pharmacy services should look like in the future.

PSNC submitted a response to the Call to Action and worked hard to support LPCs as they worked on local events and responses. You can read PSNC’s response below. Click on the arrows to move through the document.

Or download PSNC’s response to the Call to Action here:

PSNC’s response to NHS England’s community pharmacy Call to Action (March 2014)

Summary of PSNC Response to the Call to Action

PSNC also produced a summary of its response:

Summary of PSNC community pharmacy CTA response

The below Wordle also gives a flavour of some of the themes covered in PSNC’s response.

What happened during the Call to Action consultation period?

During the consultation period, PSNC, LPCs and pharmacies worked extremely hard to gather views and to write responses outlining what community pharmacy has to offer. In total NHS England received more than 800 responses to the CTA, which it confirmed is more than it received for the CTA for general practice.

At a local level, many LPCs and local NHS England teams hosted meetings which pharmacy teams attended and which were designed to gather local views. In particular local NHS England teams held events to:

a) work with local communities to develop strategies based on the emerging principles set out in the CTA, with close engagement with patients and the public and Health and Wellbeing Boards, to ensure that community pharmacy develops in ways that reflect their pharmaceutical needs and priorities and build on their insights;

b) discuss with local community pharmacists and contractors, CCGs, CSUs, local authorities and other health and social care partners what changes NHS England needed to make to support these local needs and emerging strategies;

c) ensure that all outcomes were linked appropriately to the five domains of the NHS Outcomes Framework and helped reduce inequalities.

You can read about how PSNC helped LPCs to respond to the Call to Action by downloading our guidance and resources for LPCs:

Detailed guidance on how LPCs can get involved and PSNC resources to support this activity