Consultation on pharmacy services in County Durham

We wanted your feedback about pharmaceutical services in County Durham as part of updating our Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment.

What is the latest?

333 residents responded to the consultation which took place between 16 May and 14 July 2022. Of the responses received:

91% can easily access pharmacy services;
31% access pharmacy services at least weekly, and 62% access pharmacy services less than once a week but at least monthly;
55% always visit the same pharmacy service, and 40% usually visit the same pharmacy service;
59% normally get to their pharmacy by car or taxi;
67% use a community pharmacy with 29% use a GP practice dispensary;
2% use an internet pharmacy service.

Following consultation, the Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) 2022 - 25 was updated and presented to the Health and Wellbeing Board, where it was approved, in September 2022. You can read the full report, which includes more details about the consultation at Health and Wellbeing Board agenda and minutes 28 September 2022, Agenda Item 7.

Background

Every three years we work with our partners (through a Health and Wellbeing Board) to produce a PNA.

A PNA considers your health needs alongside what pharmacies and GP practice dispensary services are available, to identify if there are any gaps in service delivery.

The key conclusion of the draft PNA 2022-25 is that there are sufficient pharmaceutical services across County Durham. This can be demonstrated with several facts including:

There is a good distribution of pharmaceutical services in areas of high population density, and in areas with more significant health needs (ie areas with a high population density of older people, and in areas of deprivation).
There is a reasonable distribution of pharmacies with extended and weekend opening hours in all localities.
Out of area pharmaceutical services do not provide a necessary dispensing service in County Durham.
The estimated builds of future housing developments by 2025 will not require new pharmaceutical services.
County Durham has 24 pharmacies per 100,000 population - this is higher than the England average of 21 per 100,000.
Public surveys of pharmaceutical services indicate that on average 93% of people who responded stated that they could easily access pharmaceutical services in County Durham.

What happened?

We consulted on our draft PNA for 2022-25 from May to July 2022.

You can also see our Pharmacy services mapping exercise undertaken in December 2021, which complements the information in the PNA.

Have your say

The closing date for comments was 5.00pm on Thursday 14 July 2022. Thank you to all those who responded.

Document downloads

Privacy notice - consultations (PDF) [105KB] (opens new window)