The Future For Community Pharmacy In Europe

Community pharmacy in much of Europe is in crisis, both of finance and identity, as the profession enters a new era, says a new Financial Times report. Author Donald Macarthur notes that while the old system was supply-driven and aided by a sense of professional mystery and deference, the new system will be more competitive, needs-based and patient-oriented. Pharmacists, like manufacturers, will be less dependent on just selling medicines and will move more fully into pharmaceutical care.

Pharmacists are seeing a steady erosion in their profit base, and are being subjected to more and more interference. In some countries they are losing core business to dispensing doctors, and they face even greater loss of prescription turnover from the alternative methods of drug delivery now being proposed. They are under pressure as supermarkets and drugstores attempt to break into their market for the counter sale of over-the-counter medicines. Moreover, they find themselves over-trained for what they do, and underutilized for what they know.

However, the study believes there is a future for community-based health care, given that government policies are shifting expenditure that way on grounds of cost-effectiveness. Pharmacies already form a network of health care centers in the community, and pharmacy would therefore be expected to benefit.