The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 266 No 7149 p718-722
May 26, 2001

  RPM
  Packaging
  Disillusioned youth
  GlaxoSmithKline
  Interactions
  Travel medicine
  Seprate register
  Code of Ethics

Resale price maintenance (4 letters)

We need other forms of support

From Mr T. Mahmood, MRPharmS

The loss of resale price maintenance (RPM) puts the existence of my independent pharmacy under threat. It is now time that our paymasters survey our consumers to gather evidence of our professional services and commission research into the intervention we carry out in our daily practice.

I feel it is now the appropriate time to find alternative and effective mechanisms of support for the independent community pharmacist. This could be in the form of:

• A larger monthly professional allowance.
• Extra payments for
  • home delivery to the elderly or house bound
  • professional input that is made to benefit patient care, eg, liaising with GPs to consider therapy changes or dose alterations
  • advice given over the counter without selling medicines
  • demonstrating inhaler technique regularly thereby reducing GP consultations

These are just a few ideas that could develop us further. My professional colleagues will no doubt have numerous ideas of how we can be supported and exactly what benefit we can provide the patient, local health professionals, the health authority and the National Health Service. If it is accepted that RPM is not the appropriate method of supporting pharmacies, then we must all find alternative methods of keeping the community pharmacist as a viable proposition.

Tariq Mahmood
Romford, Essex

One more nail in the coffin

From Mr G. S. Bhatia, MRPharmS

The news about resale price maintenance is both shocking and disgusting. I am ashamed to call myself a member of a Society whose other members allow themselves to be represented and led by non-members of the Society who have initiated and talked about price cuts on prime time news. The media has today portrayed independent pharmacies as “chemist shops” who have for the last 30 years “ripped off” Joe Public with artificially high prices.

Today is one more nail in the coffin of community pharmacy. I wonder how many will close.

Supermarkets talk about choice, competition and low prices, but what happens when they face a prescription for a truss, catheter or complex dressings? Why do patients buy over-the-counter remedies or have prescriptions dispensed at supermarkets and then phone or come to me for advice regarding these products? Why is my local supermarket pharmacy closed at least once a month because there is no manager and no locum can be found? Why do supermarket pharmacies constantly want to borrow my dispensing stock. Who is providing clinical governance at these pharmacies?

Today's decision is evidence of the failure of the Society and its Council and the failure of the membership to unite and fight its cause. We have sold our profession to the multinationals. Contract limitation will probably end in the next five years and we will all be working for a supermarket under the supervision of a meat counter manager because the highly trained 21-year-old business graduate has not been head-hunted yet.

I am certainly not going to let this happen. Are you?

For any of the supermarket big-wigs out there, may I remind you about the Medicines Act 1968, supervision and personal control. You can try to cut the prices of all pharmacy medicines to 99p (buy one get one free) if you want, but without a pharmacist on duty you cannot not sell any. Good luck with the locum agencies.

Gurvinder Bhatia
Barking, Essex

Charge or withdraw

From Mr J. A. Patel, MRPharmS

The ending of resale price maintenance so swiftly has come as a total shock. Before even having had time to come to terms with a new era for pharmacy, the next morning I am in a daze as to how to respond to this sudden blow to pharmacy.

How am I now to spend time counter-prescribing knowing that my time and knowledge are of little commercial value? How can I justify refusing sale of medicines when my next sale will not compensate for the time spent counter-prescribing?

The ray of hope from the switching of prescription only medicines to pharmacy only status has vanished. The only source of secure income from the sale of P lines is no longer there. In the dispensary things are worsening, with margins at an all time low.

I suggest that all independent pharmacies assess what services are provided at no charge, and start charging or withdraw them. Or look at your viability without income from over-the-counter products and decide alternative ways of earning from your pharmacy investment.

At my local Asda, the pharmacy counter is positioned between lager cans and a cigarette kiosk: it looks like the future for community pharmacy after all. How I envy our counterparts on the continent.

Jayesh A. Patel
London SW20

Hidden irony

From Mr S. Bullock, MRPharmS

A major supermarket chain announces the creation of ten thousand new jobs. How fortunate then that many hundreds of highly skilled pharmacy assistants are about to enter the labour market as pharmacies, both multiple and independent, divest themselves of staff in the wake of the collapse of resale price maintenance.

Steve Bullock
Barton under Needwood, Staffordshire

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