Suspension of supplementary list widely welcomed
Pharmacy groups have welcomed the Department of Health's decision to suspend
plans for primary care trusts in England to set up registers of pharmacists who work in community pharmacies (PJ, 13 May,
p555).
John D’Arcy, chief executive of the National Pharmacy Association,
said that last week’s decision was a sensible move.
“The forthcoming Section 60 Order will be fundamental to how we
think about competence as part of a fitness-to-practise regime. It would
be
sensible for this to be the starting point. Otherwise we risk having
two different sets of FTP requirements from PCTs and the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society. It would be sensible to look at them together to try to get
commonality in the over-arching principles.”
The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, too, is pleased that
last week’s announcement has put to rest confusion about whether
pharmacists should send their details to PCTs that have asked for them.
PSNC head of regulation Steve Lutener said: “We are pleased that
the minister has issued this statement which removes the current uncertainty
about whether a pharmacist must make his fitness-to-practise declarations
by 30 June. Both the Section 60 consultation and the Foster reports are
matters that are highly relevant to pharmacists’ fitness to practise
provisions, and we believe that it is appropriate to defer any proposed
Regulations until those matters have been considered carefully.”
Mandie Lavin, director of fitness to practise and legal affairs at the
Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: “The Society had serious concerns
about the planned supplementary lists regulations, which were communicated
to the DoH. The main concerns related to potential duplication of effort,
lack of clarity about information flow in the event of a fitness-to-practise
issue arising and increased bureaucracy at PCT level. The other significant
issue was that there appeared to be no evidence that these arrangements
would better safeguard the public. The Society will continue to work
with the DoH to ensure that patient and public safety is the primary
focus of regulation.”
Legislation enabling the registration by PCTs of all pharmacists involved
in providing NHS primary care pharmaceutical services was contained in
the Health and Social Care Act 2001. The purpose was to enable trusts
to take action against pharmacists whose poor or inadequate performance
put the public at risk. Similar proposals were made in relation to doctors,
dentists and opticians.
Since then, the primary regulatory machinery for each of those professions
has come under review through proposed Orders in Council to be made under
Section 60 of the Health Act 1999. There has also been an unpublished
report on the General Medical Council by chief medical officer Sir Liam
Donaldson and one on all the other health regulators by former DoH director
of workforce Andrew Foster.
Because of this, health minister Andy
Burnham said last week: “We
have decided to defer the introduction of NHS supplementary list provisions
for community pharmacists, pending the outcome of the [Section 60] consultation
and consideration of future requirements for professional regulation
as a whole. I will make a further announcement when we have completed
this work.” |
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