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Letters to the Editor
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Community pharmacy
Time for a moratorium on removal of protected payments
From Mr D. R. Kent, MRPharmS
Yet again Sue
Sharpe (chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Services
Negotiating Committee) in her reply to Harry
Gitter (PJ, 8 March
2008, p274) fails to tell the whole truth. I know Mrs Sharpe is well
aware that the
Department of Health lays the blame for setting the level of the lower
threshold for the funding of low volume dispensing pharmacies (LDVPs)
at the feet of the PSNC.
The DoH together with Mrs Sharpe’s unnamed DoH official, who I
assume is Peter Dunlevy (community pharmacy policy manager, DoH), have
consistently stated that the DoH is open to discussions with the PSNC
on renegotiation of the current remuneration formula and had agreed with
the PSNC that they should come back to the DoH, some time in 2005, for
a mid-term review of that formula.
That review never took place because the PSNC never requested it; and
in private conversation, Peter Dunlevy told me that he regretted that
the PSNC had not done so.
A letter from Rosie Winterton, the then health minister, to Glenda Jackson
MP, dated 19 March 2005, confirms that it is the PSNC and not the DoH
with which the LDVPs should be negotiating. This is confirmed by a piece
in Chemist & Druggist (C&D, 19 March 2005, p6).
Further confirmation is in a letter from the DoH (14 July 2006), which
states: “… it remains for the PSNC to bring the matter of the
Annual Establishment Payment to the negotiating table.” How much
more evidence is needed by the PSNC for it to accept that it is the body
at fault in not reviewing the situation?
How can there be a formula in which one prescription item is worth around £22,500?
Which genius within the PSNC came up with the idea that there should
be no sliding scale? And one has to doubt the intellectual abilities
of others who accepted it.
Crocodile tears from Mrs Sharpe and PSNC members cut no ice with those
whose life’s work is about to be rewarded, on 1 April 2008, by
a further reduction of £18,000 (in addition to the £4,500
they are already disadvantaged by) together with significantly reduced,
if
there
is any, equity in their business.
In the absence of superannuation for
community pharmacists (another PSNC triumph of negotiation) this equity
formed part of their retirement package.
Correction (22
March 2008)
In this letter,
the percentage mentioned in the fourth to last paragraph should have
been 0.28 per cent and not 0.0028
per cent.
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There can be little doubt that the greed of the bigger players in not
advising the PSNC to leave in place the small amount needed to maintain
the livelihood of the smaller players is disgraceful. We are talking
about £5.5m from a global sum of £1,960m (0.28 per cent).
Are the bigger players so hard up that they will seal the demise of their
less fortunate colleagues for such a paltry sum, most of which they will
lose to
taxation and the deplorable Category M attack on pharmacy profits (a further
PSNC triumph of negotiation)?
One must seriously consider to whom the PSNC is responsible and for whom it
is acting.
If the PSNC has one iota of compassion it will immediately put in place a moratorium
on the impending removal of protected payments while this matter is debated
in the open. David Kent
Chief Executive Officer
Camden and Islington Local Pharmaceutical Committee
London |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal