From Mr L. A. Berg, MRPharm
SIR,-I am writing to you concerning the continuous loss of remuneration pharmacists have to bear, making a positive balance between ingredient costs and remuneration received more and more difficult to achieve. One does not have to look too far back in recent events to realise how disgracefully, dismissively and dishonestly our "profession" has been treated by this and previous Governments. The constant insecurity of a pharmacist's present and future income must be enough for many socially invaluable independents to give up and seek other and safer forms of income.
We read of the blatant theft (because that is what it is) from pharmacist's remuneration of the "no charge" items, which have been disregarded by Prescription Pricing Authority staff (PJ, June 3, p834). There cannot be a single independent pharmacist who has not shuddered to think how much money he has lost during his career, from this one "discovery" alone and his impotence to bring the perpetrators to book.
What about the recent revelation that if the back of any prescription in the exempt pile was endorsed wrongly it would be treated as a paid prescription, and the prescription would not be returned for clarification to the pharmacy as one would expect if the Prescription Pricing Authority were fair? The removal of the prescription tax from the total paid means a loss is incurred by the contractor.
And are there other "discoveries" waiting to be found? I can assure you that they will all be to the detriment of the pharmacist, as are the statistically significant losses found when random checks are made on pharmacists' monthly prescription bundles. As a locum, I have seen the despair and fury from independent pharmacists who are now facing loss due to the Schedule D fiasco, once again foisted on to a profession with no chance of recompense or redress.
How can a pharmacist hope to achieve a decent standard of living and provide a professional environment for his customers, with an increasingly demanding and time-consuming service to the community and with spiralling costs, while in real terms, see his annual income from dispensing fall year after year, due to ineffectual negotiation? The above known losses and those additional losses yet to be discovered from institutional theft will be the end of many small businesses, if not due simply to financial loss, then due to a sense of absolute hopelessness that no one is fighting our cause and that the Government has once again robbed us, without redress, of our hard-earned living.
I had to laugh at the irony where, in the same issue that we learnt about the treatment of "no charge" items as referred to above, we read about a pharmacist being struck off after "there had been a breach of trust between the pharmacist and the pricing authority, which relied on pharmacists to provide accurate and truthful returns" (PJ, June 3, p841).
How long can we tolerate this degrading treatment of a profession, the members of which have done so much to help and serve their local communities, year-in, year-out, often at their own expense.
How many times will we have to bear the humiliation when Government "committees" set up to advise on primary health care have no pharmacist representation? We are constantly belittled, ignored and led round like sheep, afraid to "rock the boat" by airing our grievances about our treatment by the PPA for fear of alienating staff against us.
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society must take a much more positive and active role in the direction of pharmacy if we are to survive. We may be the experts on health in the community, but we are no experts on the health of the community of pharmacy.
L. A. Berg
London W9