Economic analysis suggests Society should evolve
Government cannot dictate the Society's precise future, report
says |
Economic analysis shows that the preferred option for modernising regulation and leadership in the pharmacy profession is to have “a royal college evolving from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and other expertise” when the General Pharmaceutical Council is set up. The additional annual
cost of running the two proposed organisations over and above the current
costs of the Society are put at £3.2m if they work closely together
but carry out the same functions as at present.
Close working is taken to mean sharing premises, working together in
a practical sense, sharing supporting infrastructure, and possibly technical
expertise on specialised pharmacy practice that would be inefficient
to duplicate.
That is the conclusion set out in the report of an economic and financial
evaluation carried out by NERA Economic Consulting alongside Lord
Carter’s
working party report on future options for pharmacy regulation and leadership
(PJ, 19 May, p573).
NERA put the additional annual cost of running the two new bodies at £4.3m
if the Society evolved and they did not work closely together and at £5.2m
if they were created independently of the Society. But it said that there
were more than just financial reasons for favouring the cheapest option.
“We also feel that there are qualitative reasons to support this
conclusion,” it
said. “A strong and effective professional body can contribute
to the overall quality framework and … can help to achieve the
objective that regulation seeks not only to control and root out the
rare examples
of poor practice but also to raise the standards delivered by the overwhelming
majority of professionals.”
It also warned that any course of action that called into question the
future stability of the Society would need to take account of its
pension fund deficit — which NERA says is £3.5m. NERA warned
that the buyout cost of the Society’s pension scheme would be in
the region of £13m. It says that these figures are not insignificant,
but are not out of proportion with the Society’s costs.
NERA also noted that its preferred evolutionary option was not entirely
within the Department of Health’s control. It said: “The
Government cannot necessarily dictate a precise future role for the Society;
its role will in practice depend in part on the choices made by its membership,
as well as its ability and willingness to respond to the challenges of
change and to define a successful new role for itself in a changing regulatory
environment.”
In addition, NERA warned that the overall cost of regulation would rise
in the future as the scope of regulation widened and that these additional
costs needed to be weighed against any benefits.
The report compares the Society with a small number of organisations
that NERA says can be characterised as regulatory or leadership bodies
in a manner that the Society might follow.
The comparator bodies are the General Dental Council (38,000 registrants,
retention fee £410), the General Optical Council (22,000 registrants, £169),
the Royal College of General Practitioners (24,728 members drawn from
42,000 practising GPs, annual fee up to £420, depending on income,
plus an initial examination or assessment fee), the Royal College of
Speech and Language Therapists (12,800 members, 9,600 of whom practise
and pay a £145 annual fee), the United Kingdom Clinical Pharmacy
Association (2,000 members, £65), the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists
(4,500 members, £120) and the College of Pharmacy Practice (1,176
members in 2005, £70).
The report was obtained from the DoH under the Freedom of Information
Act.
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal
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