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Letters to the Editor
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Funding for services
Less waste could mean more money for pharmacy services
From Mr A. R. Korsner, MRPharmS
The news of Brent Primary Care Trust ending
level 2 smoking cessation has a hollow and familiar ring to it (PJ, 10 March, p269). The new contract
was sold to contractors on the basis that, as Michael Levitan alludes
in your news item, there would be funds for enhanced services to make
up for the reduction in dispensing earnings. Some of us are old enough
to remember that the profession, in the same way, negotiated away “on
cost” for the promise of limited contracts. Will we get “on
cost” back if we lose limitation?
If we, as a profession, find ourselves constantly having to search for
the goalposts, then it will be too dangerous for us ever, citing past
experience, to enter into contractual changes in the future, and this
would stunt progress.
If the PCTs want to save more substantial sums of money than the relatively
paltry sums associated with our payments for smoking cessation services,
they should consider working with pharmacists rather than against them.
Pharmacists are, daily, throwing away unacceptable sums of money in the
form of wasted drugs. This prescribed waste is, in no way, the fault
of pharmacists, yet now it seems it is they who have to forgo remuneration
to fund it.
The pharmacy I am associated with probably dispenses, conservatively, £1,000
worth a day of unwanted medicines: no choice but to do so or starve.
Do PCTs ever give thought to the feelings of pharmacists, told there
is no money available to pay them, while throwing the returns into the
sack?
In addition, as the prescription charge increases, so does the waste.
Why can the Department of Health not see this?
When the PCT is ready to present a sensible strategy to its pharmacists,
it will reap the benefits of real cost savings to release funds for patient
benefit instead of the waste regulatory service. Until then, I fear that
disillusioned pharmacy contractors will carry on dispensing the potential
waste medicines just to keep their heads above water while becoming ever
more disenchanted with the PCT. It is time for a common sense approach
from PCTs and ministers, I think.
I understand that the PCT’s perceived answer to saving waste is
to offer 70 per cent of prescribing savings back to GPs. Pharmacists
could do a lot better than that for a lot less. When will they be approached?
I do not believe there is any shortage of funding in the NHS. I wonder
what my colleagues might think. It is time to speak up.
Adrian Korsner
London
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal