| • Retention fees
• Contracts
• Prescription charges
• Responsible pharmacist
• Community pharmacy (4)
• Emergency contraception (2)
• The Society (2)
• Drug addiction
Letters to the Editor
|
Prescription charges
Abolishing charges would save money and have benefits
From Mrs T. Jenns, MRPharmS
I cannot understand why English residents are not up in arms about why
they are to continue to pay a full prescription charge when Welsh and
Scottish residents do not. This seems grossly unjust to me. In fact,
the whole charging system is ridiculous. Surely it would be better to
abolish all charges for everyone in the British Isles. Perhaps pharmacies
in England should start a petition which members of the public could
sign.
Think of all the savings: no departments to process prepayment and medical/maternity
exemption applications; savings with tax credit processing; a simpler
process for pricing prescriptions; no investigations needed by the NHS
fraud department to check patient exemptions; and an enormous saving
on staff, paper, print and postage costs.
There would also be benefits for pharmacy: no more time-consuming receipts
to write out in the pharmacy or give refunds for, and then for someone
else to process in the PPD; no sorting prescriptions into separate bundles;
less paperwork; no checking for proof of exemption; no charges from the
banks when customers pay by card for a tax that we make no money from.
Would it not be wonderful not to have to ask patients whether they have
to pay or not? We are all so busy now, it would be great to use the time
instead to counsel patients. Life would be so much easier for those pharmacies
on the borders of Scotland and Wales too.
And how much more straightforward it would be for electronic transfer
of prescriptions. I believe one of the main stumbling blocks to a paperless
system is how an exemption declaration might be made. Abolition of charges
means no paperwork and that could save millions in ETP development costs
and possibly bring implementation forward. It would also save pharmacy
printing costs.
It all seems so simple. Of course, people will say it will cost too much.
Well we could try it, and then if it all becomes too expensive we could
add a few drugs to the blacklist or make some available to prescribe
for selected conditions only. At least that can all be dealt with by
computer programming.
Tessa Jenns
Wimborne,
Dorset
|
The
Pharmaceutical Journal