Exclude health from European cross-border rules
Europe: is the integrity of UK health services under threat? |
All health services should be excluded from the scope of a proposed European directive on cross-border services, the Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union has said.
The planned directive (PDF 430K) would ban a range of licensing and
authorisation requirements in all service sectors so that businesses
in any part of
the European Union could offer services in any other member country based
on requirements set by the country in which they are primarily based.
A PGEU position paper (PDF 1.7
MB) warns that service providers should always be subject
to the rules of the country in which services are provided. To do otherwise
would mean providers of services in the same country could be subject
to different rules.
The PGEU paper says: “Many countries link the establishment of
new pharmacies to the number of inhabitants in a given area or to the
characteristics of the territory (eg, low population density, mountainous
areas). The application of such population and geographical criteria
has proven to be a key element in the organisation of national health
care systems, designed to guarantee high quality, accessible pharmacy
services throughout the national territory.”
PGEU president Pedro Capilla said: “The proposal as it stands does
not take due account of the special nature of health services and could
therefore have undesirable effects on the organisation, financing and
long-term sustainability of the health care sector.”
A detailed joint response by UK pharmacy organisations to a Department
of Trade and Industry consultation sets out the extent to which the planned
directive cuts across provisions intended to guarantee the integrity
of UK health services.
Among other concerns, they warn that primary care trusts would be unable
to ensure that pharmacists and the premises from which they operate were
suitable and posed no risk to the public unless publicly funded health
services were excluded from the directive’s scope.
The proposed directive also includes a provision that could mean that
NHS dispensing contracts would have to be time-limited. The response
warns that this could mean that the business risk of opening a new pharmacy
was not justified because of the length of time that it takes to recover
launch costs from trading profits. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
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