From September 2025 the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSE) and NHS England will work with 42 selected “wave 1” sites to trial implementation of the Governments 10 year health plan.
Sir John Oldham, senior adviser to the health and social care secretary will overview this programme.
Four enabler groups covering digital, workforce, estates and finance will be tasked with resolving any barriers to implementation that arise through the programme.
The vision behind the 10-year plan is to make the neighbourhood health service the alternative to ‘hospital by default’ and by 2035 make sure that most outpatient care is delivered outside of hospitals.
New neighbourhood health centres (NHC’s) with neighbourhood teams, will bring tests, post-operative care, nursing and mental health professionals closer to peoples homes.
The 10-year plan will follow the principles of the neighbourhood health guidance- that care is to be delivered as locally as it can be, digitally by default and in a patient’s home and only using the resources of a neighbourhood health centre or hospital if absolutely necessary.
It is important to not though that at this time no contact has been made with community pharmacy about this important implementation stage. Sadly, this all too often happens as while community pharmacy is undisputably a cornerstone of community healthcare they are rarely bought into the early planning stages of community healthcare initiatives. Instead, they are usually dragged in as an afterthought, too late to add guidance and insight as it is after all the plans have been cooked up by the various NHS management teams.
Local Pharmaceutical Committees (LPC’s) are easy to contact and to work with. They are eager and capable of liaising between all NHS bodies and the local community pharmacies that are at the centre of community care, particularly in deprived communities. There is no excuse at all for not using this valuable resource in local health care planning and implementation.
If anything is to be delivered successfully in the community it is best done using the local insights and deep relationships with patients that a local community pharmacy has.
The Independent Pharmacy Association which represents family-owned pharmacies in England has raised this with NHSE for their urgent attention.