The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee has called on the Government to take action over medicines which are being dispensed but not used. In particular, the PSNC wants an immediate move to one-month prescribing.
Writing in the first issue of PSNC News for 2000, Mr Wally Dove (chairman, PSNC) said that following the BBC's Watchdog programme highlighting the amount of medicines being wasted (PJ, February 12, p238) he had written to the minister responsible for community pharmacy, Lord Philip Hunt (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State). Mr Dove had urged him to meet PSNC representatives to discuss what could be done.
Mr Dove suggested in his letter that a move to one-month prescribing could be introduced quickly and would lead to immediate cost savings, in terms of waste, even allowing for the increased payments to community pharmacies which would result from the increased prescription volume.