| • White Paper
• Patient records
• Electronic prescribing
• Pharmacy contract
• Community pharmacy
• Medicines use reviews
• Minor ailment scheme
• Medication errors
• English Pharmacy Board
• Council election
• Education
• Public relations
• New professional body
• The Society (2)
• Euthanasia (2)
Letters to the Editor
|
White Paper
Pharmacy reforms are wide of the point
From Mr M. H. Smith, FRPharmS
I view with scepticism the reported euphoria around the publication
of the pharmacy
White Paper, the Clarke
report and the Galbraith
report.
The most significant of these, the White Paper, seems to be remarkably
short on financial detail.
I have been in pharmacy for 40 years and learnt early on that one of the first
things you do is cost any new project accurately. I assume that this work has
been carried out, but am a little dismayed that in England we are to be left
to the whims and inefficiencies of primary care trusts and that a working group
will be set up to look at this issue. This seems to be putting the cart before
the horse.
Pharmacists want to take on new roles and it is right that our abilities are
recognised, but we already do much for nothing. I trust that the Department
of Health does not wish us to bail PCTs out over the out-of-hours fiasco created
by the GP contract.
In her review of pharmaceutical contract arrangements Anne Galbraith gives
us little of substance on the vexed subject of control of entry, suggesting
it will “fall away” as PCTs take control of contractual arrangements.
The
100-hour situation is farcical and the inadequate control of entry regulations
leave contractors open to the financial pressures associated with property
developers, not the providers of professional services.
Many of the developments depend on the quality of the PCTs, which strike
me as administratively top heavy and, in many cases, fail to engage with
pharmacy.
That means we continue to chase around for £27 here, or £15 there,
while we are required to make further investment on falling margins.
Today, a patient returned £930 worth of injections that were no longer
required (and the patient had not died). Such reckless prescribing is scandalous.The
DoH would do well to address this before it squeezes every penny out of the
supply chain.
In Devon 20 years ago we organised a waste survey. At that time the figure
was around 10 per cent of dispensed medicines. With the advent of monitored
dosage systems goodness knows what the figure is now.
We are constantly told by politicians that investment in the NHS has increased
threefold in the past 10 years. My question is simple: how much of the money
allocated to PCTs for pharmaceutical services gets to the point of delivery?
The Clarke report strikes me as being of little value. Unless the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society offers more to its members it may not survive as a voluntary membership
organisation: at best it will become marginalised.
I remain to be convinced that this is the new dawn.
Mike Smith
Budleigh Salterton,
Devon |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal