Government urged to own up over control of entry 'error'

Pharmacy stakeholders have accused the Department of Health of fouling up a control of entry rules change.

Industry sources rubbished DH claims that rewording the "necessary or desirable" test to "necessary or expedient" would not change the criteria for contract applications.

John D'Arcy, NPA chief executive said: "I suspect this is a cock-up, but it brings a fundamental change. Expedient is a different word with a different meaning. To me it suggests it might be easier to get a contract granted."

David Reissner, partner with pharmacy law specialists Charles Russell, told C+D: "They [the DH] made a mistake and they should admit it."

Sandra Gidley, Lib Dem MP, said: "There are broader principles at stake here: a) we have to work out what the impact will be on pharmacies, and how b) the government can tweak words in legislation and not think about the consequences."

(DotPharmacy.com 16 November 2006 .

How pleasant it is to see the biter bitten in the nauseatingly hypocritical world of pharmacy politics.  Their squeals of outraged anguish are music to my ears.

The reaction of the NPA is light years away from their reaction to that other inadvertent slip of a government’s pen some 10 years ago.  A slip which became notorious as “the loophole” in the Clothier Regulations.

Briefly, that government slip allowed any chemist who already had premises in a Health Authority area to avoid the Clothier Regulations which statutorily controlled where either doctors or chemists could dispense.    Clothier had been negotiated between the professions about 10 years previously.  It was both a legal regulation and, doctors thought, a gentleman’s agreement.  

Gentlemen’s?  Hah!

No sooner had the chemists found out about the loophole than they were pouring through it like, I seem to recall one writer saying in Chemist and Druggist magazine, rats from a sewer.    After all, the chemists’ attitude was, why risk Clothier when they could deny the doctors any defence of their dispensing practice and, with 100% certainty take over all dispensing for the doctor’s area.   Without any compensation or expense.

Indeed, the then Assistant Secretary of PSNC (the chemists’ negotiators) was reported in Chemist & Druggist magazine on 10 September 1994 as advising chemists to take advantage of the provision “quickly” as the regulations may be shortly corrected.

Behaviour, you will rightly think, more in keeping with that of spiv tradesmen rather than that of one of Britain’s oldest professions.

Their disgraceful and squalid behaviour led to many practices losing their dispensing rights over a period of eleven years with the enormous financial loss and service deterioration which went with that.  Many dishonourable chemists are today sitting in their back rooms getting fat on their ill-gotten proceeds.

There were no shrieks then of “cock-up” or “mistakes” from pharmacy legal experts and politicians.

Quite the reverse.   Pharmacy united in fighting doctors who attempted any defence tooth and nail, even through the courts and beyond.

The message was clear.  Pharmacists were admitting they were trades-people more intent in grabbing dispensing territory and income, than behaving as an honourable profession.   There was no offer to join with the BMA to ask government to correct their error.

Yet, here they are today, whingeing over another inadvertent word - in the Control of Entry regulations.

But this is not the first hypocritical act of these tradesmen.

Remember the old adage, “doctors shall prescribe and chemists dispense etc” which they rigorously defended until it became convenient for them to prescribe (from the whole Pharmacopoeia)?

Remember their other old defensive scream?     “Prescribing and dispensing should not be in the same hands owing to a conflict of interest”.   That held good for chemists again until they took hold of the Pharmacopoeia to begin prescribing – and of course dispensing what they were prescribing.

Remember their strident objection to supposed “unsupervised dispensing”  by doctors?   That cry has been muted as the chemists seeks legal permission to leave the shop in the hands of technicians whilst they either play golf or interfere in medical practice.

Morally and realistically there can be now no objection to any, yes, any doctor dispensing medicines to his patients.  In fact, thinking about it logically, it is by far preferable for patients to receive their medicines at the surgery, turning every health centre into a one-stop primary care centre.   Given the opportunity I am sure patients would agree.   

After all, what is the point of making sick people trudge to a High Street shop which happens to double as a dispensary for medicines?   Especially as the shop-keepers themselves are no longer interested in dispensing.

At this point one has to wonder what that useless and witless organisation, the Dispensing Doctors Association Ltd is doing to justify its existence.  Maybe it is still cosying up to the chemists.   It is certainly not pushing at what could easily become an open door.   Where has its fire gone?    Has it become too politically correct and timid?   What a shame, after such a great campaigning start as the plain, good old DDA.

(18/11/06)    Now read/return to:  Since when?  for more pharmacy news.