The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7252 p781
7 June 2003

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Where is pharmacy's share of the new NHS money?

Community pharmacy has not seen any of the large uplift in money granted to the National Health Service by the current Government. Rather, the money has been used to increase consultant and general practitioner salaries, Steve Dunn, group managing director of AAH Pharmaceuticals, told the Vantage convention in California this week.

"I cannot help but think that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has abrogated its responsibility for placing pharmacy at the forefront of Government health thinking," Mr Dunn commented. He went on to say that although it is necessary to have a regulatory body, it is equally necessary to have a body to ensure that a strong and competent lobby for pharmacy is maintained at the highest levels of Government. "Pharmacy has too many competing voices ... if the Society is not going to seize the mantle, then there needs to be a coming together of the other pharmacy bodies," he added.

Pharmacy will have to endure four "seismic shocks" all in the same year, Mr Dunn said. Events in 2004 — likely to include a two-tier pharmacy contract, a rebalancing of the generics tariff and a new method of generics remuneration, the full-scale launch of medicines management, and new continuing professional development requirements — mean that community pharmacy businesses are going to have to face tough new challenges. Setting and defining a vision of where pharmacy needs to be and strategies as to how it is going to get there are "surely the role that pharmacy's representative bodies should be undertaking, rather than focusing on tactical infighting," Mr Dunn told the meeting.