The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7442 p272
10 March 2007

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Exclude pharmacy from code on promoting services

Community pharmacy should be explicitly excluded from the proposed code of practice for promotion of NHS services, say pharmacy organisations.

In separate responses to a Department of Health consultation on the code (PJ, 2 December 2006, p656), the Company Chemists’ Association, the National Pharmacy Association and the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee all agree that the code is inappropriate for community pharmacies.

“Unless pharmacies are explicitly stated to be outside the remit of the code, primary care trusts may misunderstand and require pharmacy owners to demonstrate that they have signed up to the NHS code when carrying out their audit and monitoring of the pharmacy,” says the PSNC.

The organisations believe that private businesses should be allowed to invest their profits as they wish and that pharmacies would be at a disadvantage if they were subject to the NHS code and other non-pharmacy retail outlets were not.

The organisations point out that the promotional activities of community pharmacies are already covered by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s code of ethics. “This code provides a similar degree of protection to patients and consumers as would the proposed NHS code, in terms of ensuring information is not misleading, inaccurate, unfair or offensive,” says the PSNC. A further aim for the NHS code — that expenditure of public money on advertising and promotion is not excessive — is not relevant to pharmacy, they say.

The organisations also point out that to decouple the promotion of privately funded services and products from those available though the NHS would be difficult.

If, in future, the code were to apply to community pharmacies, a full consultation on those proposals would be necessary, they say.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society highlights many of the same issues in its response to the consultation but says that it supports in principle wider roll out of the NHS code to all areas of health care provision.