The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7341 p336
19 March 2005

This article
Reprint   Photocopy

PDF 90K, Acrobat Reader

· Public liability insurance
· Community pharmacy
· New contract
· Council election
· Prescription charges
· Repeat dispensing
· ETP
· Complementary medicine
· The Society (4)
· The Journal (2)

Letters to the Editor

Repeat dispensing

Proposal should be given consideration

From Mr J. V. Wilson,MRPharmS

I wish to thank U. A. Patel (PJ, 5 March, p269) for his comments on my Broad spectrum article on repeat dispensing (PJ, 26 February, p232). He is, however, rather wide of the mark in saying that my solution is not workable. At one pharmacy where I worked for a time, there was a Hewlett Packard laser printer to print medication administration record sheets for nursing homes. This had a photocopying facility in which one dropped a document to copy into a slot and a good copy came out after a few seconds. On one occasion I had, for some reason that I cannot now recall, to copy a number of FP10 forms. Having loaded the printer with A5 paper, I copied about 20 FP10 forms in a short time. At the pharmacy where I worked one day last week, the telephone/fax was even faster in copying an FP10 on to a sheet of A5 paper. All that is needed is a bit of ingenuity and lateral thinking. The process of endorsing and stamping the photocopied forms would take little longer than at present. We could even have A5 paper preprinted with the declaration that “this is a true and correct record”, with a space for the pharmacist’s signature and registration number.

Mr Patel’s calculations also do not tally with current published experience of repeat dispensing, since by no means all patients would be suitable for such a scheme anyway. However, I think that my proposal should be given serious consideration. It is a way forward with little change to current procedures and would bring considerable benefits to patients. After all, the latter are what matter. If Mr Patel and others are concerned about additional workload, then perhaps the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee could negotiate an additional payment. This would be a small price for the NHS to pay for the improvement in efficiency of medicines supply and potential reduction in wastage from a repeat dispensing scheme.

Incidentally, this week’s Health Service Journal e-mail newsletter states that the “common solution” standardised clinical IT system (part of the National Programme for IT) being developed for London and the South East will be delayed “by at least nine months” and will not now come into operation until June 2006 at the earliest. And we are pinning our hopes for repeat dispensing on future developments of this system? I rest my case.

John Wilson
Arnold, Nottinghamshire

Send your letter to The Editor

Previous Topic (Prescription charges)
Next Topic (ETP)