GPs urged to open pharmacies to make profit without extra work
GPs have been urged to open pharmacies as a
way of making big profits “without demanding
much extra work”.
Writing in Doctor magazine, David
Roberts, a founder member of the
Dispensing Doctors’ Association, said: “If you
can prove your new pharmacy will outdo the
overall standard of care provided by existing
chemists then, even if there is a shop just
down the street, your company stands an excellent
chance of getting the contract.”
Dr Roberts highlighted the exemption
from the control of entry rules that applied to
pharmacies in one-stop health centres.
Royal Pharmaceutical Society Council
member Graham Phillips has expressed concern
that a substantial part of the community
pharmacy network could fold if many doctors
take Dr Roberts’s advice. “It’s very easy
for a doctor to open a pharmacy,” he said:“It’s
not a level playing field. Large practices could
easily exploit the 100-hour exemption or the
exemption for primary care centres.”
Warning that wider changes in primary
care were also putting pharmacy at risk, Mr
Phillips added: “Pharmacists are being gated
out of any proper input into primary care at
any level.With practice-based commissioning
and the reorganisation of primary care, primary
care trusts are in disarray.The only priorities
seem to be to get the money under
control and get practice-based commissioning
in place.”
Michael Holden, chief officer of
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Local
Pharmaceutical Committee, shares Mr
Phillips’s concerns. Commenting on doctorowned
pharmacies, he told The Journal: “It’s a further element that undermines the confidence
of community pharmacists to invest in
their businesses.We’ve already got threats to
future investment from the exemptions to
control of entry, particularly the 100-hour
exemption which undermines pharmacy and
NHS planning.”
Sue Sharpe, chief executive of the
Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating
Committee, told The Journal: “GP-owned
pharmacies have been around for many years,
but recent developments — the control of
entry relaxations and programme of building
new primary care centres — have created
more opportunities for GPs to open new
pharmacies. The PSNC’s principal concern is
the direction of prescriptions by GPs to pharmacies
they own. It is essential that this is effectively
controlled.” |
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Pharmaceutical Journal
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