<p>Primary and Secondary Care</p>

Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 3:02 pm on 9 November 2016.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:02, 9 November 2016

Thank you for the question. It allows me to highlight work that is already ongoing. Of course, I’m sure you will appreciate, and the pharmacy you visited will appreciate, that we are taking a very different approach to the funding of community pharmacy here in Wales, compared with the £200 million cuts being delivered to pharmacy in England. It’s a real challenge for community pharmacy over our border. I am pleased we’re taking a different approach, not just on the money, but on what we expect to see delivered for that money as well, because we will have a quality-based approach with that extra sum of money that we are saying we will continue to invest in community pharmacy. It will change not just dispensing against the amount of items, not just volume, but actually the quality of the service as well. I’ve already asked for a piece of work to be done with community pharmacy—it’s being led by the chief pharmaceutical officer—on looking at a specific range of areas, and actually understanding how we improve the hospital discharge process is a specific part of that work, and I expect to see proposals for improvement. I think we can make greater use and greater benefit from the quality of services that exist within community pharmacy to make things easier for patients who leave the hospital and then go back into their community, and, at the same time, we’ll certainly have a very busy hospital pharmacy service as well. So, over the course of the next six months or so, I think we’ll hear more from me about how we’ll continue to develop and invest in community pharmacy here in Wales.