What is definition of “community pharmacy”?

[BettyAlberta]

My local pharmacy is run by my rural GP service and is financially vital to keep the Surgery going. That’s what I think of as a community pharmacy. I think you mean a commercial pharmacy, or shop on the high street.

[nomoreheels]

Were you replying to someone Betty? It's just you've started a new thread & it doesn't really makes sense.

[madme1 in reply to nomoreheels]

She may have been replying to me but not sure, as I wasn't sure what was meant by Community Pharmacy, I took it to mean my local commercial pharmacy rather than one attached to a surgery.

[cyberbarn]

I agree, this looks like a reply to another thread. However, the definition of a community pharmacy is a pharmacy in the local community as opposed to a pharmacy in a hospital. When there is a pharmacy in a rural GP surgery that is usually called a dispensary if it is solely for patients that live more than 1.6km from a pharmacy. Just to complicate things some GP surgeries have pharmacies or what we would call high street chemists, on their premises.

[cyberbarn]

Except that hospital pharmacies are not open to the public, they are only available for inpatients and in some areas outpatient of the hospital. Therefore those pharmacies are not community pharmacies.

It is actually an official contractual title, as explained here by the King's Fund. kingsfund.org.uk/publicatio...

[cyberbarn]

They might do, but by definition and the contract that they sign with the NHS, it is likely that it will be classed as a hospital pharmacy, not a community pharmacy.

The term may be superfluous for patients, but it has a definition defined by the NHS.