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Letters to the Editor
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Boots/Alliance merger
What will happen to patient medicines records?
From Mr G. B. Green, MRPharmS
Emmanuel Opaleke (PJ, 18 March, p322) should be aware that Boots has
arranged with the Department of Trade and Industry to sell off those
branches that it must dispose of to meet its merger terms criteria, in
minimum groups of four. There was also a deadline of 29 March for “would-be” buyers
to persuade the DTI that they have the resources and the necessary management
skills both to buy and successfully run those pharmacies in the future.
I am able to help such people form consortia to meet those criteria.
I am concerned, however, that potential new owners should be aware that
when Boots decided to sell off some of its pharmacies in 2003, the clients
I acted for faced continuity problems when the company insisted on removing
the dispensary computers from the pharmacies and refused to hand over
patient medicines records to the new owners. It claimed that this would
breach patient confidentiality under the Data Protection Act.
I argued that such a handover between registered pharmacists did not
breach the DPA any more than when one pharmacist transfers professional
responsibility to another pharmacist (eg, a locum pharmacist). I sought
the support of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s law officers
on this point but no help was forthcoming at that time. Perhaps the Society
can give a opinion on this matter before June when Boots/Alliance pharmacies
will be transferred to new owners. This could have a bearing on the value
that is placed upon these businesses.
Gerald Green
Lewes, East Sussex
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PRADIP PATEL, superintendent pharmacist at Boots The Chemists, responds:
As
undertakings in lieu of the merger of Boots and Alliance UniChem,
the Office of Fair Trading requires Boots to divest itself of stores
or
interests in consortia pharmacies in 95 locations, in no more than
25 packages (with
no minimum number of stores in each package).
The patient medicines records for divestment stores (both Boots and
Alliance Pharmacy) will be made available to purchasers of the stores,
as they were in
the previous Boots pharmacy divestments in 2003, providing that purchasers
satisfy Data Protection requirements. The data output from our bespoke
pharmacy record
system is easily adopted by standard software packages or other systems.
The time scale for divestment is not yet set. It is subject to the resolution
of the appeal from Celesio to the OFT’s decision. |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal