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Accrediting internet pharmacy
In a new century

Accrediting internet pharmacy

Internet pharmacy is seen by some as a fly-by-night way of bypassing normal pharmacy regulations and something which will undermine the traditional relationship which pharmacists have with their customers, built on face-to-face consultations.

Regulating internet pharmacies might seem like trying to harness the west wind, but the Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand (PSNZ) has shown that it can be done (see p5). Pharmacy websites accredited under its scheme are linked to pages on the PSNZ’s own site. These give details of the business operating the internet pharmacy and how and when its site was accredited. “Meaningful” consultations between pharmacists and patients must be able to take place in order for accreditation to be given.

The Government is keen to see internet pharmacy established in Britain. In the Health and Social Care Bill, published just before Christmas, there are clauses which will allow pharmacies to provide services across health authority boundaries (see p5). This, it is explained, will allow the development of internet, mail order and home delivery services.

So, internet pharmacy is coming, whether we like it or not. The challenge is not to resist it but to regulate it. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, which has both a regulatory and an enforcement role like the PSNZ, should take a close look at developments down under. The Society’s interim guidance on internet pharmacy, hurriedly issued at the beginning of last year, is in need of urgent updating. Where New Zealand is leading we can follow.

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In a new century

So, that is it - we are now definitely in the 21st century. Perhaps now we can leave a few relics of the 20th century behind. Top of the list must be cutting and snipping of perfectly acceptable patient packs just to suit some out-dated regulations and a bean-counter’s approach to accounting for prescribing costs. If dispensing in whole packs of 28 tablets is good enough for our Continental colleagues, then is it not time that it was good enough for us? The time has come for the Secretary of State for Health to reconsider his short-sighted approach to the patient pack initiative and to put the interests of patients before those of accountants. Pharmacists will never achieve the aims of the pharmacy plan if they spend all their time looking for their scissors.

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