The National Pharmaceutical Association is opposed to making emergency hormonal contraception products available as Pharmacy medicines.
At their March meeting on March 28, NPA management board members decided that they would prefer EHC to remain a prescription medicine and for pharmacists to supply it under NHS group directions. This would mean that patients would receive it free of charge no matter what route they chose to get access to the treatment.
Mr John D'Arcy (director, NPA) told The Journal on March 29 that if products became P medicines, they would be available free from family doctors and clinics but only on payment from pharmacies. Another concern was that pharmacists could find themselves refusing to supply an EHC product because the patient did not satisfy the requirements of a group direction only to see the patient go to the next pharmacy down the road and buy it over the counter.
Group directions would also provide a good route for the transition of pharmacists from dispensers of prescriptions to dependent prescribers and then to independent prescriber status, Mr D'Arcy suggested.
A Royal Pharmaceutical Society spokesman said that EHC should be more widely available and pharmacists should be ready if a POM-to-P switch took place.