Health Service Focus

Coalition for Collaborative Care

NHE talks to Royal Pharmaceutical Society policy and practice lead for England, Heidi Wright, about the organisation’s new role as a member of the Coalition for Collaborative Care.

The Coalition for Collaborative Care (C4CC) was launched in November 2014 to support the 15 million people with long-term conditions and to help make person-centred care and support a reality. 

It has recently welcomed a host of new partners, including the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS). 

When the news was announced, the RPS’s England director Howard Duff said: “People with long-term conditions have told us they would like more support from pharmacists with their medicines. As a partner we are looking forward to sharing our knowledge and expertise with C4CC and improve patient care. We will be taking the people-centred approach to care and applying this to everything we do.” 

NHE was keen to find out more about the new partnership from the person who is going to be the lead contact from the RPS: Heidi Wright, policy and practice lead for England. 

She told us that the focus on people with long-term conditions, and especially those with multiple conditions, their pharmacist has an important role. “We want to help pharmacists support people more with their medicines, and particularly patients with long-term conditions, who are often on several medicines. 

“The knowledge around what pharmacists can do is quite variable. Some people will understand this is a service that’s available and that pharmacists are people you can go and talk to about your medicines, but others do not. It depends what kind of experience you’ve had as a member of the public with pharmacy. 

“Even with other healthcare professionals, not all of them know the extent of what pharmacists can do.” 

She said the RPS is looking forward to meeting the other partners – there are now 40, including charities, professional bodies, campaign groups, medical colleges and royal colleges, NHS England, NICE, commissioning bodies, health research organisations and primary care representatives. 

Wright explained: “We want to meet the other partners and raise the agenda of medicines and the expertise that pharmacists have, and what pharmacists can do to support patients with their medicines. 

“Also, from my point of view, engagement is important. If we’re doing pieces of work, it’s about how we involved the Coalition and partners of the Coalition in that work to make [our work] more multi-disciplinary, patient-focused and person-centred. 

“Being part of the Coalition raises within our minds the need to bring that person-centred approach more to the forefront of what we do as well.” 

The RPS has already been doing work on medicines optimisation – which Wright acknowledged is “not a very patient-friendly term” – trying to learn from patient groups what kind of support would be beneficial. 

“Involving patients in a lot of the work we’ve already done has been really useful. You get some amazing stories from patients about how they take (or don’t take) their medicines. It is really good to do that – even at the onset, when we were developing that piece of work, having the patient voice within that was really important.” 

Wright will attend the C4CC partner meetings as a representative of RPS, and then feed back the key points to her own organisation. 

She said: “We’re looking to do some work in the future around supporting patients who take a large number of medicines – polypharmacy – we would want to involve the Coalition in that work. 

“Having spoken to people at the Coalition, that’s probably something they’ll be very interested in being involved in. It’s about empowering patients to take control over their medicines, and it is a very patient-centred approach to medicines. 

“So already, we’re starting to make links between some of the things we’re thinking about, and that are on the agenda for the Coalition too.” 

It’s not just medicines, though – for community pharmacy especially (as opposed to hospital pharmacy) the public health and prevention agendas are also important, for example on smoking cessation, weight loss and exercise, as well as self-care. 

“That’s helped by the accessibility of community pharmacy – they’re out there on the high street, they are a clinical place you can go to. Pharmacists are getting quite involved in prevention, and having those conversations with members of the general public who come into the pharmacy who perhaps wouldn’t be venturing into a GP practice, for example.” 

Martin Routledge, director of C4CC, said: “This substantial increase in the number of influential national organisations wanting to work alongside us just highlights the desire for change across health, care and beyond. Partners will both impact at a national level and also support our increasing membership of people and groups at local level to help realise the vision of a new deal for people with long-term conditions.”

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