Residents invited to have their say on pharmacy services in West Cheshire

Cheshire West and Chester Council is inviting residents to take part in a survey on community pharmacy services in the borough.

The Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment is carried out every three years to determine whether people’s needs are being met in terms of access to and use of their local pharmacy or chemist.

The survey is being co-ordinated by Knowsley Health and Wellbeing Board on behalf of local authorities across the North West, including Cheshire West and Chester. It relates to the use of a community or high street pharmacy or chemist to get prescriptions or medicines which can only be obtained from a pharmacy, rather than a hospital pharmacy or using the part of a pharmacy that may sell, for example, beauty products.

Questions include how easy it is to get to a pharmacy, how people travel to their pharmacy, when they last used a pharmacy and if they have had problems finding a pharmacy that meets their needs.

Other questions include:

• The purpose of visiting the pharmacy e.g. to collect a prescription, get advice or medication
• What is important about the location of a pharmacy
• Opening hours of their pharmacy
• Satisfaction with services received from the pharmacy
• Wait times for prescriptions
• Use of consultations
• Views on services that should be available

The survey, which runs from 1-30 November, can be accessed via:

Patient Survey of Community Pharmacy Services 2021 (surveymonkey.co.uk).

Cheshire West and Chester Council’s Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, Cllr Val Armstrong said: “This is an opportunity for people in west Cheshire to have their say on local pharmacy services. The results of the survey will be used to shape the service in future, to make sure that they are meeting our needs here in the borough, so every response really does count.

“We’d like to encourage people to please take a few minutes to fill it in and share their experiences. It is completely anonymous and the information supplied will be treated in the strictest of confidence and will not be passed on to anyone.”