Business News summary

Moss Pharmacy is to open three “total health” format pharmacies in July...[more]

The pharmaceutical industry and the Government have agreed to continue having senior level meetings following a year of talks through the Pharmaceutical Industry Competitiveness Task Force...[more]

The Boots Co Plc is to spend £15.5m establishing a chain of 150 hearing care centres over the next three years...[more]

News in brief
Alliance UniChem Plc's Italian subsidiary, Alleanza Salute Italia, has acquired the wholesaling interests of Catena Farmaceutica dell'Adda, a central purchasing and distribution agency for 77 pharmacies in the area around Milan, Italy.

Numark Trading Ltd (NTL), a wholesaling joint venture owned by Numark Ltd and Phoenix Medical Supplies Ltd, officially started trading on April 2. To date, more than 700 pharmacists have opened accounts with NTL. A price list catalogue has been sent to account holders.

Moss sees total health as its vision for the future

Moss Pharmacy is to open three “total health” format pharmacies in July. As well as pharmacy, the branches will provide chiropody and diagnostic testing services (PJ, May 20, 2000, p751).

Steve Duncan (managing director and superintendent pharmacist, Moss) told The Journal at a briefing in London on April 6 that the total health concept was where the company saw community pharmacy in 10 years' time.

Total health has been part of the company's corporate vision for the past five years. Mr Duncan says that there is now more recognition at a local level among primary care groups and trusts about what pharmacy has to offer. Moss has around 40 pharmacists working in the field talking to PCG/Ts and they are seeing doors opened to them.

The primary care pharmacists are involved in giving prescribing advice to general practitioners, training care workers in residential homes, and the NHS Direct pharmacy pilot in Colchester. Around £90,000 has been raised from PCG/Ts for private counselling areas in pharmacies.

Moss Pharmacy has carried out considerable research into the factors affecting its pharmacy businesses, such as location, store layout, staff training, speed of dispensing and customer service. Computer models have been developed to allow the characteristics of individual stores to be analysed to see if they are performing above or below the expected level. Mr Duncan says that speed of dispensing is the biggest driver for gaining or losing prescription market share. Counselling and advice is the next most important factor but without speedy dispensing counselling is, in essence, a waste of time because the customer will not return.

The computer models highlight the value of staff training. A fully trained member of staff brings in on average £98 more a week in sales than a new starter.

Moss has set itself a medium-term aim of having a chain of 1,000 pharmacies (it currently has 702). In the long term it might reach 1,200, but this will be reviewed if the first aim is achieved.

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Industry and Government agree to keep talking

The pharmaceutical industry and the Government have agreed to continue having senior level meetings following a year of talks through the Pharmaceutical Industry Competitiveness Task Force.

The task force published its final report on March 28. One of its main outcomes is the establishment of a Ministerial Industry Strategy Group involving senior company executives and Ministers (which will meet at least annually) and an Industry Strategy Group involving officials from the Department of Health and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

Forty-six competitiveness and performance indicators have been agreed as a way to measure the effects of Government policies on the industry.

The task force was split into six working groups covering developments in the United Kingdom market, intellectual property rights, regulation of medicines licensing, science base and biopharmaceuticals, clinical research, and the wider economic climate. Individual reports from some of these groups are to be published later.

Within the UK market, the main areas of discussion were the work of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, information and advertising to patients and the availability of medicines not reimbursed by the National Health Service. The pharmaceutical industry is to be involved in the review of the NICE's activities to be carried out in July.

The industry's view is that the current prohibition on advertising prescription medicines to the public is unsustainable in the longer term, particularly as use of the internet expands. The industry says that changes to legislation will be needed but the Government sees no appetite among European governments for this. In the meantime, the ABPI and the Medicines Control Agency are to work on new guidance for disease awareness programmes and on the information which can be provided on company websites. Where medicines are not being reimbursed by the NHS, the industry wants to see a streamlining of the process of switching products from prescription-only to pharmacy-only status, greater use of patient group directions and an extension of prescribing rights for pharmacists.

The industry will have involvement in the joint task force on concordance in medicine taking (PJ, April 7, p448).

The pharmaceutical industry had expressed concern about the amount of time taken to gain ethical approval for clinical trials, particularly for multicentre trials. The task force has agreed that new guidelines should be issued stressing that both local and multicentre research ethics committees should complete their reviews in parallel and within 60 days from the initial submission.

Copies of the report can be downloaded from the websites of the ABPI (www.abpi.org.uk) or the Department of Health (www.doh.gov.uk/pictf).

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Boots opens hearing centres

The Boots Co Plc is to spend £15.5m establishing a chain of 150 hearing care centres over the next three years.

The first two centres were opened within existing Boots Opticians branches at Birmingham and Manchester on March 28. Forty-five centres are to be opened in the next six months.

The centres will be exclusively selling a new disposable hearing aid, Songbird. Each unit lasts six weeks when used 12 hours a day and will cost £22 per month per ear. The hearing aid is made to a universal design which fits most adult ears.

Boots now has 1,400 pharmacies, 299 opticians practices, 27 dental surgeries and 21 chiropody practices.

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