| · Supermarket pharmacy
· Pfizer products (2)
· Professional image
· Paracetamol
· Varicella
· Psychotropic medicines
· Dispensing
Letters to the Editor
|
Pfizer products
An opportunity or a threat?
From Mr H. Argomandkhah, MRPharmS
The outrage by community pharmacists about the Pfizer distribution is
generally seen as a threat. However a proper SWOT (strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, threats) analysis should point to the many opportunities
this will provide to all community pharmacists, regardless of their choice
of mainline wholesaler.
With the current financial pressures on primary care trusts to reduce
their drug budgets, many PCTs have issued guidance to their GP practices
to substitute simvastatin 40mg for atorvastatin 10mg or 20mg.
Using this hook to identify patients, who are clearly a target for PCTs,
pharmacists can carry out medicines use reviews and recommend a switch
if the patient’s clinical history does not contraindicate it.
This is a win-win situation: the pharmacist gets a £25 MUR fee,
while the PCT, NHS and taxpayers save over £25 per month for the
remainder of the patient’s treatment. Clearly more savings can
be achieved if branded products are also identified for generic switching
when appropriate and suitable. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical
industry will be likely to lose out financially.
Pharmacists must use their heads and their training for the benefit of
patients and the public.
Hassan Argomandkhah
Halewood, Merseyside
A risk to the viability of the community pharmacy network
From Mr S. R. Newbury, MRPharmS
As an independent community pharmacist and customer of UniChem since 1985,
I would like to add two comments to the current debate surrounding the
proposed new arrangements for the distribution of Pfizer products.
First, the long-term future of the community pharmacy network in the UK is
dependent on a strong and competitive wholesaler industry. The massive changes
that will accompany this proposed manoeuvre will, I have no doubt, create distortions
in the market, both in the way UniChem will have to gear up to deliver the
service and in the way in which other wholesalers will respond in order to
safeguard what they will perceive as their futures.
Secondly, Pfizer’s initiative is an implicit criticism of the safety
and probity of the pharmaceutical supply system in the UK, today and historically.
Pharmaceutical wholesalers are fully licensed and controlled by the Medicines
and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and community pharmacies by the Royal
Pharmaceutical Society and others. If there are concerns regarding any aspect
of pharmaceuticals in the supply chain there are existing mechanisms through
which these can be resolved in the interests of patients and which have been
seen to work perfectly well for other pharmaceutical manufacturers. If Pfizer
has a problem with these organisations or mechanisms this is where it should
focus its attention.
If this scheme is imposed on community pharmacy, dispensing doctors etc, by
Pfizer, I fear that it will be as big a risk to the viability of the network
in the longer term as control of entry, and so actions recommended by others
to move away from Pfizer products would be seen as a natural survival mechanism.
Stephen Newbury
Swansea |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal