Pharmacist prescribing moved one step closer this week with the announcement by the Government that it would introduce legislation to implement the recommendations of the second Crown report "as soon as time allows" (p424). This is, indeed, welcome news for the profession and goes some way to filling the gaping void created by the continuing absence of the long-awaited community pharmacy strategy.
It is vitally important that the profession's leaders push the Government as hard as possible to find a suitable slot in the Parliamentary timetable for this legislation. No opportunity should be missed to remind Ministers that a prescribing role, and with it full membership of the health care team, is what pharmacy wants. The first such opportunity will be at the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee's dinner on March 20. Those attending should bend the ears of any opinion formers they meet.
Becoming dependent prescribers, able to make amendments to repeat prescriptions, would allow the medicines management proposals being developed for pharmacy by the PSNC to be implemented in full. Pharmacists would be able to make changes which were in the interests of patients' health, offering the patients a more tailored and responsive service, rather than simply referring them back to the initial prescriber every time. This is in line with the Government's desire for a modernised National Health Service.
Medicines management programmes would also have the benefit of cutting down waste by reducing the amount of medicines which patients were not actually using. As we report this week, Wiltshire health authority believes that as much as 2 per cent of its prescribing budget is being spent on medicines which never leave the packets they are dispensed in (p426). Here is an easy target for savings and one to which neither the public nor the Department of Health can be opposed.
The Government's proposals for the speedy implementation of legislation to clarify the position of group protocols (now to be known as patient group directions or PGDs) are also welcome. A number of pilot schemes, notably the supply of emergency hormonal contraception, have proceeded under group protocols. These have demonstrated how pharmacy can make a contribution to public health. Formal structures for implementing PGDs should encourage more to be written and used.
A good week, then, for pharmacy. Perhaps next week we could have the strategy?