Current Issues
NHS Collaboration
Aside from distributing to all community pharmacies and dispensing doctor practices across the UK, HDA member wholesalers also manage and distribute to all NHS hospitals. This is an area of increased focus at the moment.
The HDA is working with the NHS and the Department of Health as part of the wider Carter initiative, which is examining how to make NHS secondary care procurement of medicines more efficient and contribute to overall NHS performance. The ongoing HDA/NHS meetings are considering opportunities/hurdles in hospital IT systems, procurement rules and e-commerce. The key driver for any changes will be an ‘NHS national service standard’ for companies wishing to supply to hospitals.
HDA members also work alongside NHS England and Public Health England, by offering their supply chain network, to enable the distribution of their targeted public health campaign materials to pharmacies and patients. We also work with the NHS and pharmacy to ensure vital vaccinations, such as flu, reach more of the ‘at risk’ groups, and are on hand to manage emergency stockpiles of essential medicines which the nation’s health might depend on. The HDA very much supports calls for delivering more vaccinations via pharmacy.
