The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7389 p222
25 February 2006

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Pharmacy oxygen supplies should continue

Home oxygen provision should be opened up to allow community pharmacies to continue to provide cylinders to patients alongside the new supplier companies, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee said last week.

The problems experienced in the first two weeks’ after the new arrangements were implemented highlight the benefits of the previous system, PSNC chief executive Sue Sharpe said. “We are not confident that what we have seen are only temporary flaws,” she added.

“The case for providing domiciliary oxygen as part of the patient’s pharmacy service is overwhelming. Pharmacies know their patients and under the previous system could identify and assist those with urgent needs. As we have seen, the new regional suppliers cannot do this at present and we believe they will never be able to replicate the personal care and support that pharmacies provided,” Mrs Sharpe said. “We call on the Department of Health to open up the supply of domiciliary oxygen provision, to allow patients a choice of provider, and to allow community pharmacies to continue to provide this vital service.”

In light of the death of a patient waiting for an emergency oxygen delivery ordered by a doctor, John D’Arcy, chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association, commented: “The NPA has always been concerned about the possible ‘worst case scenario’ implications, whereby oxygen suppliers would not be able to deliver emergency oxygen in the stated four-hour response time. In the old system there was flexibility: if one community pharmacy could not supply oxygen, arrangements would be made to effect supplies through another pharmacy. This highlights the difficulties and problems inherent in the new system, when patients have to rely solely on one supplier, covering a large geographic area.

“ Unfortunately, the arrangements for home oxygen deliveries from the oxygen suppliers have clearly not been thought through properly,” he added. “Planning and procedures have not been robust enough to match the demands currently being placed by oxygen patients.”

This week, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has written to the DoH to demand urgent action in addressing the problems that have been experienced by patients in accessing home oxygen under the new arrangements. “The DoH must engage with this entirely unacceptable situation and ensure that patients’ access to home oxygen is restored,” President Hemant Patel said.