2. Will the Minister provide an update on recent efforts to supplement primary care with support from pharmacies? OAQ54167

Community pharmacy has a significant role to play in delivering primary care in Wales today. Real progress has been made through new contractual arrangements that support clinical service delivery, collaboration and quality improvement. Choose Pharmacy is now available in 98 per cent of pharmacies across Wales and I have provided over £4.5 million this year to enhance training within the profession.

I thank the Minister for that reply, and I strongly support the Welsh Government's policy of using pharmacists more to supplement primary care, but I've had two cases from Dwyfor Meirionnydd in my region of patients who left a medicines use review with the pharmacist under the false belief that they'd been asked to modify their medicine regimes. The source of the confusion wasn't exactly clear here, and it was subsequently rectified by their GP, so no harm was actually done. But there does seem to be potentially a systemic problem here whereby the health board has to have a record of the MUR having taken place, and the patient has to sign that, but in these particular instances there wasn't any written record, either electronic or paper, that provided details of the advice or recommendations that had been given in the review. The potential safety risk to a patient with memory or comprehension problems is obvious, so I wonder what might be done to introduce a more rigorous regulatory check for medicines use reviews conducted by pharmacists to try to reduce these problems to the absolute minimum.

There's a risk in every interaction with the healthcare profession where advice is given, and it's either written down or not written down in terms of how the person is able to or chooses to use that information and that advice. Part of the point about the roll-out of Choose Pharmacy is that it allows pharmacists as regulated healthcare professionals themselves to make entries onto the GP record. We see that already with the common ailments service that's been rolled out. I'm always interested in hearing more specific examples of what's gone on, if it's individual practice or if it tells us something at a system level. So if the Member wants to write to me with the detail of the incident, then I can consider that with officials and with the health board, whether it is indeed an individual matter to be taken up or if it does tell us something that we need to address at a system level.

Minister, I was pleased to visit a community pharmacy in my constituency earlier this week, and I had a very positive conversation with the pharmacist about the services he offers and indeed some of the challenges he faces as well. One of the issues he raised was the NHS computer system, which is used to store patient information. He feels he's greatly hampered by the long-winded process of logging on to a computer system that appears to struggle to download basic information. Whilst, of course, personal data must be kept secure, I'm told that on occasion it can actually take up to 20 minutes to get through the security logins to provide a service for the patient that should only take around five minutes. I'm sure the Minister will agree with me that it's important to access information in a timely manner, especially when a patient is waiting. Will he and his officials therefore look into this matter to make sure that pharmacies are able to provide an efficient service, given that pharmacies are providing more and more services to patients?

Yes, again, if the Member writes to me with the details of the matter I can look at whether it's an individual issue or a system-wide issue for us to address. But, overall, we have an ambitious programme for community pharmacy already as part of the primary care team as it exists, and a bigger role to play in the future—not just the common ailments system, but it's also why we're taking a different approach to other countries in the UK. Across the border there's a 7 per cent cash reduction in community pharmacy; over 120 community pharmacies have closed. We've maintained our investment, we've increased it, we have further ambition for the future, and we're deliberately rolling out access to GP systems to make sure that pharmacists can enter information into it, and that's what Choose Pharmacy is designed to help to deliver: access to information so that it's available, and that will then allow us to provide even more services in the community pharmacy sector.