Recruitment of ARRS roles to GP practices has left community pharmacy teams short-staffed, an influential committee of MPs has been told.
Launching a community pharmacy-focused inquiry yesterday, the Health and Social Care Committee heard from sector leaders who warned the scheme to employ practice pharmacists was ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’.
One suggestion floated for reversing the situation was for ARRS funding to be opened up beyond general practice in order to help retain pharmacists in the sector.
The warnings coincide with the announcement that Pharmacy First – a scheme to allow community pharmacies to provide a ‘common conditions’ service – will launch from the end of January next year.
The Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS), introduced in England in 2019, funds the salaries of various roles in general practice such as clinical pharmacists, podiatrists, paramedics and physician associates.
In recent months pharmacy leaders have issued several warnings over the increasing number of pharmacists moving from the community to GP practices.
Last month, the Government revealed that nearly half (46%) of ARRS funding between 2019 and 2022 was spent on recruiting clinical pharmacists.
Illustrating the extent of the problem, vice-chair of the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) Jay Badenhorst said around a third of his own branches are running without permanent pharmacists due to ARRS.
In response, Mr Badenhorst argued that the scheme ‘should be open’ to community pharmacy so that they can ‘play in that part as well’.
In his role as superintendent pharmacist for Whitworth Chemists, Mr Badenhorst found that when ARRS was introduced ‘a lot’ of the company’s pharmacists made the move over to GP practices.
‘Up until about a year and a half ago, we were fortunate enough to have pharmacists working permanently in all of our pharmacies,’ he said.
However, following the launch of the scheme, they were now ‘currently running about a third of our pharmacies without a permanent pharmacist in’.
Chief executive of the Company Chemist’s Association (CCA) Malcolm Harrison said the impact on community pharmacy was ‘a case of unintended consequences’, and that the Government’s aim to create more pharmacist roles in general practice ‘is brilliant for patients that need to…access primary care there’.
But he said those new positions were created without ‘any extra pharmacists in community pharmacists’ – ‘they weren’t pharmacists sitting at home thinking “I need to do some work, please can someone find a job for me”’.
‘So, they’ve robbed Peter to pay Paul,’ Mr Harrison added.
Chief executive of the Association of Independent Multiple Pharmacies (AIMp) Dr Leyla Hannbeck told the inquiry that while Covid-19 had put pressure on the sector, the ARRS scheme had worsened workforce issues.
‘We have been trying to recover [from the pandemic] as months have passed by, but obviously, the ARRS scheme coming in kind of led to more exhaustion for our teams because you end up losing your experienced pharmacists,’ she said.
The imminent Pharmacy First scheme will mean community pharmacists can access and add to patient records currently maintained by GPs.
And following the publication of more details on the scheme, the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) has urged the Government to urgently review why pharmacies will be paid ‘more than double’ per consultation compared with GPs.
Earlier this year, pharmacy leaders said schemes like this are not an attempt to replace GPs and should be seen as an opportunity to work collaboratively with other parts of primary care.
A version of this article was first published by Pulse’s sister title The Pharmacist
