Pharmacy services in Coventry what is important to local people

Concerns raised by patients and context around seeking to find solutions for how primary care services could better deliver for the local population and meet demand led the Healthwatch Steering Group to add this piece of work to the 2016-17 Healthwatch Coventry work programme. Our aims were to:

• Understand how and why people use local pharmacy
• Consider what makes good quality pharmacy services
• Enable the views of local people to influence the way forward for pharmacy services in Coventry including ideas for how pharmacy can further support GP services

We used a self completion survey, guided interview survey and discussion and focus groups to gather the views of a total of 703 local people between October 2016 and February 2017.

There was much praise for and value placed on local pharmacy. The local nature of pharmacies was very important and reflected in decision making about which pharmacy people used. A significant issue is that people are not necessarily aware of all the services that are already available via different pharmacies. It was clear from our sample that repeat dispensing was the main service being used at pharmacies and there was some confusion about the other services.

We made 9 recommendations based on the findings and directed to commissioners, system planners and pharmacies. We have been working with the local Public Health department through a Community Pharmacy Steering Group to get developments related to our recommendations.