Journal of Medicines Optimisation - Mar 2022
Journal of Medicines Optimisation • Volume 8 • Issue 1 • March 2022 31 be triaged. We really see pharmacy being that place where they can diagnose and treat for low acuity conditions within the pharmacy setting or can refer the patient to the appropriate and most effective treatment pathway for their needs. The delivery of NHS care will increasingly be through collaborative multi-disciplinary teams in integrated systems with defined pathways of care and interoperable clinical systems. Traditional boundaries will disappear to enable pharmacists to operate at top of their licence and clinical competence. Pharmacists will be the key to making this happen so it is critical that they have a seat at the table. The big change in the ICSs is place based care, moving from national based solutions to place based solutions. Clearly, it is important that the financial structure enables that, but in reality it is going to take conversations at place based level about linking the treatment pathways between pharmacy, GPs and secondary care to ensure a good patient experience that leads to better patient health outcomes. In this space, Viatris see our role as advocates on behalf of pharmacy who can help to bring different people to the table to have conversations about how we revise some of these pathways and some of the financial flows to resource the healthcare need. Is Viatris planning to engage in a new and different manner with pharmacy within your strategic plans? Yes, absolutely and our first step is to engage with pharmacy to listen and understand what their needs are with a view to co-creating a solution together. That is different perhaps to the past where a company would have just pushed things on to pharmacy without the prior engagement and understanding. It is imperative that we listen to the customer first, to understand what their needs are before thinking about how we can provide some value to enable that. The world is changing, we are coming out of a pandemic and the environment is also changing in terms of the structure, so we need to understand their priorities. A common thing that we are hearing in terms of how we can support is advocating on behalf of the sector so that they have a voice and get recognised and I think we are making progress in terms of demonstrating the value that the whole sector provides. Also, we think it is incredibly important that pharmacy delivers on the key components of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework. We are in year three of a five year agreement and the pharmacy sector has to deliver the proof points to government to show that if they are given the funding, they can deliver the service and get the desired population health outcomes. Pharmacy have already created the goodwill in terms of their delivery throughout the Covid pandemic. Now, things like the New Medicine Services, hypertension case study findings, enabling PCNs and ICSs to work etc., are the things that we need to deliver on in the next two years. Viatris will be focusing on how we can help with that. The first big part of this is workforce development and managing the chain and we are offering some services there. The old solutions and old ways of working are not the way forward. Collaboration and not competition is the way forward for our sector. Viatris is very much aligned with that spirit and we are looking to collaborate with like minded people who are open to a different approach and to different ways of working. It will be necessary to leave some of the baggage from the past behind and start again - a new fresh approach where we all work together on a common problem to find a good solution. How can Viatris help pharmacy to develop more professionally to improve patient care? There are many things that we can do as we have 500 colleagues with such a broad range of skills and experience. The first place we are trying to start is with leadership engagement and championing the role that pharmacy has within the sector but also talking to these business owners or managers or leaders of teams about how they manage change. Viatris have joined two legacy companies together in a pandemic, and as a result have learned a lot of lessons around managing change.
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