News summary

Resale price maintenance at an end The Community Pharmacy Action Group, acting on the advice of its counsel, decided to withdraw its opposition to the Director General of Fair Trading's application to the Restrictive Practices Court for a ruling that RPM is no longer in the public interest...[more]

Pharmacy education still needs science New elements of pharmacy education, such as pharmacotherapy, clinical judgement, and communication and pharmaceutical care skills, require a science base just as much as the traditional parts of the course...[more]

Decision soon on NHS 24 Scottish Health Ministers will soon be deciding how NHS 24, the Scottish version of NHS Direct, will be implemented...[more]

Europe-wide medication error reporting scheme to start soon A scheme to collate medication errors throughout the European Union is to be launched by the European Federation for the Advancement of Healthcare Practitioners (EFAHP)...[more]

Wholesale change for Welsh pharmacy development committee The 10-strong Welsh Committee for the Professional Development of Pharmacy has eight new members...[more]

Health and Social Care Bill enacted The Health and Social Care Bill received Royal assent on May 11 after the Government withdrew its opposition to House of Lords amendments which would have delayed the Bill and caused it to fall when Parliament was dissolved...[more]

Resale price maintenance at an end

Resale price maintenance on medicines is at an end. The Community Pharmacy Action Group, acting on the advice of its counsel, decided to withdraw its opposition to the Director General of Fair Trading's application to the Restrictive Practices Court for a ruling that RPM is no longer in the public interest.

Mr Justice Buckley, the judge hearing the case with two lay assessors, indicated on May 15 that the three of them has independently reached the view that there was insufficient proof that a substantial number of independent community pharmacies would close or that the range of products available to the public would be significantly reduced if RPM was removed.

The only outstanding matter is who is to pay the costs of the case.

Counsel for the director general said that consideration was to be given to an application for costs. A decision would be made by the end of the week. Counsel for the CPAG drew the judge's attention to legal provisions that prohibited the court from awarding costs against the losing party unless it had behaved unreasonably.

The judge warned the director general that he faced a high hurdle and would need a solid basis if costs were to be awarded in his favour. The judge said that there would be no dereliction of duty on the part of the director general if he decided not to apply for costs.

It was agreed that the matter should be decided on May 23.

CPAG's chairman and community pharmacist, David Sharpe said that the outcome of the case was a devastating blow to Britain's network of community pharmacies.

“This has been a very difficult decision for CPAG because we continue to believe that we have a strong case and that many pharmacists rely on RPM to stay in business. However, having been given the clear indication that we are unlikely to win, it is in no one's interest to continue incurring further costs.”

He added: “Many pharmacists will simply not be able to survive, given the buying power and aggressive pricing tactics of the supermarkets. This is a sad day in Britain as it marks the death of yet another important community service on the high street. The real losers here are the elderly, disabled and young mothers who rely heavily on the free advice and range of services offered by the local pharmacist.”

Mr Sharpe said that supermarkets would immediately begin to discount over-the-counter medicines with a consequent loss of sales for all pharmacies.

Holding to the CPAG's view that price cutting would reduce pharmacy viability, Mr Sharpe said: “The public, long term, are going to suffer. The accessibility and availability of pharmacists and pharmacies will reduce.” He added that once lost, there would be no recovery. “We have seen over the past years a reduction in retail outlets from high streets and suburban parades — butchers, bakers and grocers. All are now in the supermarkets.”

The Director General of Fair Trading, John Vickers, said: “This is excellent news for consumers who will now benefit from lower and more competitive prices for common household medicines. After 30 years, retailers will be able to set their own prices competitively. Consumers will save many millions of pounds a year.”

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society's director of professional standards, Sue Sharpe, said that the result would be that community pharmacists would find it that much harder to maintain their professionalism in the face of competition from commercially-driven non-pharmacy outlets.

The loss of RPM immediately resulted in the announcement of substantial price cuts by supermarkets and by Boots the Chemists. The stock market reacted to the news that Boots's profits would fall by £15m by marking Boots shares down by more than 6 per cent.

Boots said that it had responded quickly and aggressively to the abolition of RPM. Its intention is to increase market share wherever it can using promotions, price management tactics and sales incentives. To this end it immediately announced a three-for two offer on Nurofen, 20 per cent off Nicorette chewing gum and £1 off a bottle of Calpol.

Asda cut the price of 16 Anadin tablets from £1.75 to 87p, less than the trade price. Other products were cut by between 20 and 50 per cent. Tesco reduced Nurofen (24s) and Anadin Extra (16s) by 40 per cent and took £1 off a bottle of Calpol. Sainsbury cut the price of Nurofen (16s), Haliborange vitamin C (20) and Seven Seas evening primrose oil (60) by 50 per cent.

Pharmaceutical wholesalers said that they would support independent pharmacies in the face of this sort of competition, particularly through their own-label ranges.

Unichem said that own-brand products would become more important than ever to pharmacies. It said that it expected consumer demand for them to rise and sent all its independent customers £50 worth of free own-label products free of charge, along with leaflets and window posters to explain to customers why they should remain loyal to local pharmacies.

Numark said that its own-label toiletries were price competitive, so it expected to be competitive on medicines too.

AAH's managing director, Steve Dunn said that if pharmacists managed health by providing advice, service and support which supermarkets could not, then the loss of RPM was a blow of limited proportions.

Next week's issue of The Journal will include more analysis of the possible effects of the loss of RPM and what pharmacists might be able to do to maintain their competitiveness.

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Pharmacy education still needs science

New elements of pharmacy education, such as pharmacotherapy, clinical judgement, and communication and pharmaceutical care skills, require a science base just as much as the traditional parts of the course.

That was the view expressed by Professor Dick Tromp, president of the International Pharmaceutical Federation's community pharmacy section, at a European Association of Faculties of Pharmacy (EAFP) Symposium “New orientations of teaching” in Brussels earlier this month.

Professor Tromp stressed the importance of teaching pharmacy students to evaluate how strong the evidence presented to them was and of learning how to combine professional aspects and human aspects of care.

It was also Professor Tromp's view that continuing professional development should be mandatory for practising pharmacists.

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Decision soon on NHS 24

Scottish Health Ministers will soon be deciding how NHS 24, the Scottish version of NHS Direct, will be implemented.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive told The Journal on May 11 that a blueprint for NHS 24 had been drawn up by a design and implementation group at the National Health Service in Scotland. The group contained representatives of the health professions, including pharmacy, nursing and general practitioners, as well as ambulance services and patient groups. The blueprint would be presented to Ministers in the next one to two weeks for further discussion and decisions.

The main difference between NHS 24 and NHS Direct in its first phase will be greater integration between NHS 24 and out-of-hours GP co-operatives and ambulance services.

The blueprint also says that many other services will develop links with NHS 24 through agreed protocols. These services will be introduced in its second phase. They could include pharmacy, community nurses, dentists, social workers, mental health services and GP services within working hours. Internet access to NHS 24 is also to be introduced at some point in the future.

The NHS 24 service will be managed by a special health board, based in Glasgow. The location of the call centres is to be decided as part of the blueprint, but three main centres may be established. The service will operated in the same way as NHS Direct, with triage nurses using clinical decision support software to help them in giving advice to callers.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said that she was unable to discuss the progress of the pharmacy pilot for NHS Direct in England because this was a matter of ongoing policy and could not be discussed during during the run-up to the general election.

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Europe-wide medication error reporting scheme to start soon

A scheme to collate medication errors throughout the European Union is to be launched by the European Federation for the Advancement of Healthcare Practitioners (EFAHP).

The association is to encourage pharmacists, nurses, doctors and other health care practitioners to report errors for publication in a monthly medication safety alert, which is to be distributed by e-mail to subscribers. The focus of the programme is to understand the types of medication errors that occur and to develop strategies to prevent them.

A multidisciplinary meeting has been planned to launch the scheme in London on June 19. Further meetings will be held in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Scandinavia and Switzerland in the autumn.

The EFAHP is a non-profit organisation set up within the European Union in 1999 with the aim of promoting safe, effective and economic patient care by multi-disciplinary teams. It intends to try to address three main issues for the time being. They are: the safe use of medicines; the development of new roles for health care workers; and the development of new domiciliary health care services.

The organisation can be contacted at

EFAHP Secretariat
Le Travez, BP 28, 81260 Brassac, France

Tel +33 (0) 563 744 305
fax: +33 (0) 563 744 304
e-mail info@efahp.org
web site www.efahp.org.

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Wholesale change for Welsh pharmacy development committee

The 10-strong Welsh Committee for the Professional Development of Pharmacy has eight new members. Two existing members have been re-appointed. All the appointments are for three-year terms.

The new appointments are:

• Stephen Newbury, an independent community pharmacist based in Swansea
• Peter Jones, a Boots primary care pharmacist for south Wales
• Jamie Hayes, a prescribing adviser for Conwy and Denbighshire local health groups
• Cheryl Davies, chief pharmacist at Singleton Hospital
• Emma Keenan, a senior pharmacy technician for cancer services
• Sue Shepherd, service support manager for head and neck surgery at the Royal Gwent Hospital
• Dr Stephen Daniels, director for undergraduate studies, Welsh School of Pharmacy, Cardiff University
• Dr Sally Davies, consultant in medical genetics, Institute for Medical Genetics, University Hospital Wales

The re-appointments are:

• Robert McArtney, clinical pharmacy specialist for Wales
• Professor David Luscombe, head of the Welsh School of Pharmacy

The Welsh Committee for the Professional Development of Pharmacy advises the National Assembly for Wales on the postgraduate education and training needs of pharmacists and their support staff in Wales. It is also responsible for the development of strategy for the continuing professional development of pharmacists and their support staff.

The appointments have been awaited since the beginning of April.

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Health and Social Care Bill enacted

The Health and Social Care Bill received Royal assent on May 11 after the Government withdrew its opposition to House of Lords amendments which would have delayed the Bill and caused it to fall when Parliament was dissolved.

Consequently, the Act does not give the Secretary of State for Health the power the Government sought to prohibit the use of patient information for purposes considered to be contrary to the interest of the National Health Service. The power was to have been used to halt the sale of anonymised data collated from pharmacists' patient medication records to companies, such as Source Informatics. Source Informatics further processes the data and sells it to pharmaceutical companies so that they can target marketing at doctors who are not using their products.

The Department of Health wanted the power because it was unable to halt such sales by legal action. The Appeal Court ruled that if the Department wanted to prevent sales it seek the power through new legislation.

Another amendment accepted by the Government in order to ensure that the Bill reached the statute books halted the abolition of Community Health Councils. Enactment means that a legislative pathway has now been cleared for the introduction of prescribing by pharmacists as both dependent and independent prescribers.

The Society's role in the passage of the Bill is described here.

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