The case for the proposed trial of medicines management - the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee's proposed method of seeking to ensure that people get the best out of their prescribed medicines - could not have been put more eloquently. Speaking at the PSNC's annual dinner, Mr Wally Dove (chairman of the PSNC) pointed out that no one currently had the responsibility of managing the patient's medication and helping him or her to use it efficiently. No one had the task of evaluating the patient's progress with a drug, to decide whether it was the best treatment for a particular condition and to advise if the dose was correct. And no one was there to talk to the patient on a regular basis about any problems he or she was having in taking their medicines. Pharmacists operating the medicines management service devised by the PSNC were the right people to fill that gap, he averred.
The audience present to hear these remarks could not have been more appropriate. It comprised over 150 members of Parliament, along with representatives of pharmacy bodies, the health professions, health authorities, primary care groups, charities, patients' groups, and voluntary bodies. Present, too, was the Health Minister responsible for pharmaceutical services (Lord Hunt).
The time was ripe for a positive response from the Minister on the PSNC's request for Government backing for the medicines management trial. But it was not to be. The Minister, in responding to Mr Dove's remarks on medicines management, confined himself to saying that the Government was looking at the proposals very seriously.
But any immediate disappointment at this might be tempered by the tenor of other remarks made by the Minister. He made it abundantly clear that he sees much untapped potential in the pharmacy profession and that he intends to make use of it. We can only hope that, once his officials have completed their consideration of the PSNC's medicines management trial plans, the response will be positive.
A further pointer to a positive outcome is that this particular health minister did not deliver a speech composed largely of platitudes and make his escape as soon as he decently could. Lord Hunt stayed, circulated among guests and seemed to make a point of talking to as many people as possible. These are not the actions of someone who intends to ignore pharmacy's case.
The chairman of the profession's leadership group on medicines management (Mr Allen Tweedie) has said that what he hopes will be achieved by the proposed trial is a re-engineering of pharmacy's position in primary care and a greater stake in the health care process (PJ, January 29, p189). There is no doubt that if the trials are successful, pharmacists will be operating on a new plane of professionalism. If Lord Hunt can help pharmacists to achieve that, his time as Health Minister will be remembered with gratitude.