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Around 2,700 community pharmacies could be at risk of closure because they are financially unviable, an analysis of NHS data has suggested.
Pharmacy data analysts PharmData, looked at statistics from LloydsPharmacy, whose parent company, Celesio UK, announced in October 2017 that 190 Lloyds branches were to be closed or sold off.
Celesio said the branches were no longer considered “commercially viable”, as a result of government changes to policy on reimbursement and retrospective clawbacks over the past two years.
PharmData uses statistics from the NHS Business Services Authority, published at contractor level in England and Wales, to provide information for pharmacists and pharmacy owners on how their competitors are performing. By using these data, PharmData identified approximately 200 Lloyds pharmacies, which dispensed fewer than 4,000 script items each month.
Extrapolating this benchmark figure across community pharmacy, the researchers predict that a total of around 2,700 pharmacies run by multiples could be at risk of closure, if they were to use the same business model.
When the community pharmacy funding cuts were being considered, then health minister, Alastair Burt, was reported as predicting that as many as 3,000 pharmacies could close once the cuts kicked in.
Burt later rowed back from these comments, telling The Pharmaceutical Journal in February 2016 that: “We just don’t know what the situation will be. There is no government plan for any closures; it is not a directive”.
“That pharmacy will change is highly likely,” he added. “But how it will look is up to the pharmacy profession”.
Co-founder of PharmData, and himself a pharmacist, Oliver Staunton, said: “If we are led to believe that it is [Lloyds] worst-performing branches in terms of script items which are closing, then the cut-off point is about 4,000 items per month.
“If all multiples use the same criteria, then about 2,700 pharmacies would close, which is broadly in line with the figure of 3,000 which is popularly quoted.”
