Unregulated competition will hurt pharmacy, commission is told
Open and unregulated competition is a crude and damaging policy that needs urgent reassessment if irreversible damage to the infrastructure of community pharmacy is to be avoided, the Competition Commission has been told.
This claim is made by the Independent Pharmacy Federation in its response
to a CC request for evidence
for its grocery inquiry (PJ, 24 June, p741).
The IPF response focuses on the effect of exemptions to the tests of
necessity and desirability that are currently being exploited by supermarket
pharmacies to gain contracts in circumstances where they might otherwise
have been refused because services are already being provided by existing
pharmacies.
The response points out to the CC that independent pharmacies have little
resilience to competition brought about by the exemptions because they
are dependent on the NHS contract for the bulk of their income. In contrast,
corporate entities, such as the supermarket companies, are able to introduce
capital derived from non-NHS sources.
It says that the effect of the exemptions has been to concentrate pharmacy
services in areas that are already well served by pharmacies, rather
than in disadvantaged areas. For example, it says that there are three
such pharmacies within 100 yards of each other in Nottingham and which
put a further 10 pharmacies at risk.
“The fear for patients is that housebound people will lose first
of all the weekly visits with managed medicine dosage trays which they,
their
carers and social services departments have come to depend upon,” it
says. “The associated management of their medication will disappear,
along with visits to the surgery on their behalf and their free daily
deliveries. Finally, their local pharmacy will vanish as the ability
to fund dispensing staff diminishes.”
The IPF says that in-store pharmacies have little incentive to replace
the lost community services, since their main role is to increase footfall
in their parent grocery stores.
In a letter accompanying the submission, IPF member Noel Baumber says: “Community
pharmacy is incredibly diverse, efficient and cost effective for patients
and tax-payers.
“The federation wishes to state that recent legislative changes
that have been sought and encouraged by the supermarkets are now unfair
and prejudicial
to the infrastructure of the independent sector of community pharmacy
and hence to the interests of the general public.” |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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