The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7184 p160
9 February 2002

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Where there's money, there's a way [more]
Is NICE now in limbo? [more]

Where there's money, there's a way

Scotland's pharmacy plan, "The right medicine: a strategy for pharmaceutical care in Scotland", was launched at the beginning of the week (p161 and p168). It bears many similarities to the "Pharmacy in the Future" plans for England but there are some innovations that should be considered. One of the simplest is the suggestion that community pharmacies should be encouraged to carry the NHS Scotland logo. Some pharmacists may be ambivalent about the NHS at the moment, but there is no doubt that carrying the logo will emphasise the fact that community pharmacists are an integral part of the NHS both for themselves and for patients. In addition, the NHS logo is well established with over 50 years of brand building behind it, something pharmacists should enjoy.

Also announced this week was funding for 10 pharmacies to update their premises to enable them to provide enhanced services. This is a recognition that no one model will suit all and that, by looking at a range of options, pharmacists will have a wide choice of alternatives that they can examine in future to adopt for themselves.

Although much of the strategy is based on developments in the community, the hospital sector is also to be given the model treatment. Funding should be released to enable different departments of pharmacy either to re-engineer their services or even physically to configure departments to improve the efficiency and quality of services they provide.

With the development spread over a four-year time scale, clearly the Government must hope that the contributions of pharmacy to improvements in the NHS will start to be visible to the electorate before the Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2003 and well established by the next general election. Let us hope that the means will remain as steadfast as the rhetoric.

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Is NICE now in limbo?

Earlier this week, the Government announced that it had struck a deal with the manufacturers of beta-interferon and glatiramer acetate that would enable certain sufferers from multiple sclerosis to be prescribed these drugs, even though the National Institute of Clinical Excellence announced on the same day that the health service in England and Wales could not afford them (p163).

The Pharmaceutical Journal is, in theory, in support of such a deal, which we described in principle in a leading article last year (3 November 2001, p632). However, the Government has made a huge error in not providing additional resources to fund this reduced-price deal. Instead, it expects health authorities to find the cash out of existing resources — inevitably at a cost of rationing other patient services.

The Government sets up NICE as a rationing body yet, when a well-orchestrated campaign by patient groups hits a raw nerve, it caves in. Although NICE could argue that the reduced-priced deal makes the drugs cost-effective it would have been much better to have left the integrity of NICE intact, not to have moved the goal posts. The Government should have found new money to support such an overt political decision. That way, patients and health authorities would be happy and we would not be left wondering about the value the Government places on NICE's decision-making.

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