The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7188 p311-320
9 March 2002

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

News summary

Remuneration should match our workload, LPCs say

Local pharmaceutical committees called on the Government to give pharmacy contractors remuneration increases in keeping with rising workloads.

Successfully proposing a motion to require the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee to achieve this, CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS (St Helens and Knowsley) said that increased productivity was normally rewarded by a wage increase or bonus, except in pharmacy. Government policies on nurse prescribing, forthcoming national service frameworks and associated targets for general practitioners had implications for pharmacy workloads which would make the increases of the past year look like a drop in the ocean.

"The PSNC must convey to the Government that we will not tolerate finding ourselves in a same position as this year again," he said. "If there is an increase in prescription volume we must be remunerated for that increase."

Although the motion was carried without opposition, participants in this year's local pharmaceutical committee representatives' conference rejected a related motion which called for the withdrawal of all non-contractual or unremunerated services.

Also carried was a motion of no confidence in the Department of Health's ability properly to resource its own pharmacy plan.

GRAHAM PHILLIPS (Hertfordshire), proposing, said that the only sources of additional money beyond the global sum were health authorities' unified budgets. He saw little chance of money being allocated to pharmacy there. The Government was long on rhetoric, but short on action, and long on demands, but short on support. Without proper resourcing, the pharmacy programme would remain a distant and frustrated pipedream.

ALAN CASTELL (Barking and Havering) said that the motion was a waste of time. In 20 years of LPC conferences he had never had any confidence in the Department. "If they haven't got the message by now, we should stop sending it," he said.

STEVE BRILL (Hertfordshire) successfully called on the conference to urge the PSNC not to base any new contract negotiations on the flawed global sum arrangements.

He said that the global sum system was open to abuse by the one side to the agreement that had control over the outcome — the Department of Health. Pharmacists should seek a deal which gave them direct increases for anything more than a 1 per cent improvement in productivity. "Mutual aims require mutual benefits," he said.

"The Department should only get out of pharmacy the quality and value it is prepared to put in. We have had enough of being beaten over our heads with our own efforts. If the Department wants more out of pharmacy all it has to do is use a little less stick and a little more carrot."