Jeroen van de Pol

14 Chapter 1 even further increasing in the upcoming years [33]. This has the full attention of the Dutch minister of health [34]. So for the transition from secondary- to primary care to be successful, GPs are in need of support. Especially regarding medicines that are of increasing complexity requiring expertise that community pharmacists predominantly have. Therefore, to be able to contain healthcare costs by transitioning from secondary care to primary care, extensive collaboration between healthcare professionals within the primary care setting is a necessity to manage the increasing burden (predominantly by supporting GPs with the increased burden). This therefore creates an opportunity for the community pharmacy as a profession to step in. However, as stated earlier, the role of the community pharmacist is predominantly focused on the dispensing of medicines and compounding medicines and not primarily on the provision of CPS. Currently, community pharmacists can be considered healthcare providers that are under-utilized, as they are able to provide more CPS, but are not enabled in doing so. This whilst community pharmacists are well trained and educated healthcare providers to support both patients and other healthcare providers using their pharmaceutical expertise. Community pharmacists have always played a vital role in containing costs of pharmaceutical treatment by stimulating the usage of affordable (generic) medicine when possible [35]. But also, medicines need to be properly used and adhered to, to be effective. Community pharmacists are highly approachable healthcare professionals that can play a vital role in achieving this [36 - 38], next to activities already being performed like checking for drug-drug interactions and contra-indications. The Royal Dutch Pharmacists Association is aware of the under-utilized value of community pharmacists and the necessity to change community pharmacy practice and have been continuously working on providing insights to different stakeholders. Examples of an opportunity statement as stated by Kotter is the campaign “ Klaar om te wenden! ” (translated to English: “ready about!” ) initiated by The Royal Dutch Pharmacists Association in 1993 to promote more direct patient contact in community pharmacy practice [20]. Other examples of opportunity statements are the white paper published in 2010 on which the future position and role of the community pharmacist is presented [21] and a vision on the future of community pharmacy practice [39].