I read with enormous sympathy the letter by your 92 year old correspondent who has experienced problems with the service at Lloyds Pharmacy in the Broadway. 

Having recently looked after my mother through dementia and other illnesses I can understand their frustration in their dealings with the pharmacy.

I would like to point out, however, that this in no way reflects the quality and care of the staff at Lloyds, all of whom are professional and community-minded. What they are dealing with, as far as I can see, is years of under-investment in primary care coupled with the increasingly complex needs of an ageing population. 

Each time my mother needed a repeat prescription I had to go to the pharmacy (a 16 mile round trip - I was not allowed to use the NHS app as I was at a different GP surgery from my mother, something that was a preposterous waste of everyone's time) and they then had to phone the GP. Apparently they were using the same phone lines as the ones used by patients, and we all know what that means in terms of waiting times and grating phone music.

There was no way that I could email the pharmacy or that they could make electronic requests to the GP. And don't get me started on their dealings with the hospital.
Pharmacies are being severely let down by the archaic use of technology in primary care.

Is it any wonder that pharmacists and their staff are leaving in their droves? 
They can't provide the community care they signed up to and won't be able to until systems are streamlined and technology brought into the 21st century. 

Perhaps we even need to think radically and move to centralised pharmacy services. It would be a shame to have to resort to an Amazon style service but what we would lose in personalised care we would undoubtedly gain in efficiency. And you wouldn't have to fight over the only chair in the pharmacy.

Shoonagh Hubble,
Ladywell Lane,
Alresford

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