Commissioning services and the new community pharmacy contract: (2) drivers, barriers and approaches to commissioning

Aim: To identify factors which primary care trusts consider to be barriers and drivers to the commissioning of services from community pharmacies. Design: A self-completed questionnaire Subjects and setting: All PCTs in England. Results: The response rate was 74%. 82% of PCTs reported access to funding to be a barrier to commissioning pharmacy services. Lack of PCT capacity was viewed as a barrier by 59% of PCTs and 53% viewed the impending PCT reconfiguration as a barrier. The main driver to commissioning was reported to be the new pharmacy contract (76%). Relationships between PCTs and local pharmaceutical committees (LPCs) were also viewed positively. The most common approach to commissioning adopted by PCTs was to engage proactively with LPCs and/or local pharmacists (92%). Most PCTs collaborated on the commissioning of pharmacy services with neighbouring PCTs (75%). Conclusion: Collaboration across PCTs was found to be widespread which may be indicative of the need to address a lack of capacity. PCT reconfiguration also aims to address capacity issues, however this was viewed as a large barrier to commissioning by the respondents and future research will be needed to examine the impact this has on commissioning of community pharmacy services.