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Letters to the Editor
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Private dispensing
Customers should pay hospitals pharmacists their worth
From Mr N. P. Stidolph, MRPharmS
Irene Heywood Jones (PJ, 9 October, p524) appears to need a quick refresher
course in the workings of the NHS. Basically it is a traditional socialist
(ie, as opposed to “new labour”) organisation designed to
provide treatment and medicines free or cheaply at the point of supply.
Most medical and ancillary services became directly employed by the service.
In order to minimise costs community pharmacists were not directly employed,
but carried on their commercial businesses and were thus able to charge
a subsidised rate for dispensing NHS prescriptions. Hospital pharmacists
were directly employed and therefore have no commercial function; provision
was made, however, for hospitals to charge for dispensing services provided
in conjunction with other chargeable medical services, eg, treatment
of foreign diplomats etc.
Thus, while the community pharmacist is clearly in the marketplace and,
since Thatcher, is forced to compete and attract custom, the hospital
pharmacist has no commercial function at all.
The hospital pharmacist has many functions not falling upon his community
colleague. He or she may have total parenteral nutrition to provide,
ward rounds to organise, a hospital drug recognition call centre to maintain,
and several technicians to keep a beady eye on. The NHS is under enough
pressure keeping the queues down without encouraging rich self-important
people to jump the queue. Do not say “it will only take a few minutes”!
When a pharmacist is presented with an unfamiliar patient, extensive
checks are required and there will be no provision for pricing at the
dispensary level. I would have considered a one-off fee of £32
about right, especially when presented with a nurse with a prescription
for haloperidol which she has clearly not obtained from her own GP.
Ms Heywood has three clear choices: she could queue at her own GP (this
is totally free but she might have to face questions about why she is
requesting this particular treatment); she could ask her consultant colleague
to write her a private prescription, then go to a commercial pharmacy
and pay a competitive price; or she could get her busy hospital pharmacist
to drop what he is doing for her convenience and stump up what he is
really worth.
N. P. Stidolph
Bognor Regis,
West Sussex
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal