Proposed CD management plans worry the Society
Society inspectors are to take over CD inspection in community pharmacies
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Concern has been expressed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society
that proposals to improve the management of Controlled Drugs could jeopardise
patient care.
Responding to a recent Department of Health consultation on
proposed guidance (“Safer management of Controlled Drugs”, PJ, 16
July, p71), the Society says: “The emphasis in the guidance appears
to be focused on controlling potential harm if CDs are wrongly used and
the fear is that patients’ clinical needs may be ignored as health
care professionals go to greater lengths to avoid the use of CDs in
an attempt to avoid a risk rather than maintain a benefit.”
Commenting on a proposal that primary care trusts should designate
accountable officers responsible for ensuring good CD management, the
Society suggests
that they should also be explicitly responsible for ensuring adequate
patient care.
The Society expresses some concern that the proposals could lead to
a number of inconsistencies of approach. In addition to saying nothing
about the management of CDs in prisons or veterinary surgeries, the
proposals
apply only to England, and not to Scotland or Wales. The Society sees
this as a concern, because it has responsibilities in Scotland and
Wales, as well as in England.
It also warns that the proposed guidance is more onerous for the public
sector than it is for private and independent health care, and sees
specific difficulties in relation to a new role for the Society’s
inspectorate.
The inspectorate will take over the police chemist inspection officers’ role
of routinely inspecting CDs in pharmacies. This extended role cannot
be undertaken in the absence of adequate resourcing, the Society warns,
adding that the planned guidance should recognise that registrants
fund the Society and that it should be able to charge primary care
trusts
if they ask for targeted inspections. It also fears that its 16 inspectors
could spend so much time in meetings with PCT officials intended to
improve communications between inspecting organisations that routine
pharmacy
inspections, and the investigation of other serious matters, will suffer.
Further concern is expressed over inspection arrangements across the
public/independent health care boundary. Community pharmacies with
NHS contracts in England will have to make annual declarations to their
primary
care trusts, while private pharmacies have to send them to the Society.
But the Society says that it has no way of identifying private pharmacies
on its premises register. Also, some NHS hospitals operate registered
pharmacies without NHS contracts that would be subject to inspection
by the Society while the rest of the hospital, including its wider
pharmacy, would be inspected by the Healthcare Commission. This, the
Society warns
increases the burden of regulation and is disproportionate, inefficient
and uneconomical.
The DoH plans to implement the new arrangements from April 2006.
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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