| • White Paper (4)
• Funding for services
• Prescription charges
• Community pharmacy (2)
• Pharmacist prescribing
• Chlamydia testing
• Pfizer products
• Medicines recycling
• Skill mix
• Retention fees
• Retail pharmacy
Letters to the Editor
|
Prescription charges
How to generate money for the drugs budget
From Mr P. V. Bremner, MRPharmS
It is with much frustration that I read that the prescription
charge will be going up yet again on April 1, this time by 20p (PJ, 10 March,
p269).
According to health minister Lord Hunt, this will only affect 13 per
cent of prescriptions and will generate £425m over the coming year.
How many of those 13 per cent of patients will now choose not to have
their medicines dispensed because they will need to pay more than £20
for three items?
Using the minister’s own figures, around 62 million prescriptions
will incur the £6.85 charge, leaving around 414 million prescriptions
without any payment. How many of those 414 million prescriptions will
be unnecessarily reordered because the patient can do so without financial
penalty? Just last week, our pharmacy had to dispose of two supermarket
bags full of medicine from one patient, all unused, but continually reordered
over a period of three years. Each month, our pharmacy returns three
or four Doop bins, each with several hundred pounds worth of unwanted
medicines.
Reduce the standard prescription charge to £4 and increase the “exemption” charge
from nil to a minimal 50p and not only will we address the cost of medicines
waste but generate £455m over the year for the pharmaceutical budget.
Peter Bremner
Buxton, Derbyshire
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal