DDA Ltd finessed by chemists
Having safely agreed to the DDA Ltd's requests to allow them to prevent any new dispensing practices being formed, the chemists have finessed the DDA Ltd by hypocritically removing all their arguments against dispensing by doctors.

Why on earth does anybody at all support the DDA Ltd?

Read on for the latest extract from "dotpharmacy.com" - the chemists' weekly on-line newsletter.

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‘Direct supervision’ to go in new Health Bill

Registered and suitably trained staff* working in the pharmacy could soon be able to supervise the supply of medicines without being overseen by a pharmacist.

The Health Bill published on October 27 proposes to replace the requirements for a pharmacist to be in personal control with a ‘responsible pharmacist’, charged with the safe and effective running of the business.

This would allow for legislation enabling designated staff to undertake pharmacy activities while the responsible pharmacist is absent, provided safe operating procedures are employed. The Bill does not, however, outline the conditions necessary for supervision to be deemed to be in place.

Each pharmacy will also have to have its own responsible pharmacist, and the Bill proposes that regulations should set out the duties and activities involved. Duties would include making a record of the responsible pharmacist on any day and at any time. Failure to do so will be a criminal offence, carrying a fine of up to £1,000.

Responsible pharmacists will be able to supervise relevant activities at another pharmacy, but pharmacists who have qualified in an EU state and whose qualification is recognised in the UK will not be allowed to be the responsible pharmacist in premises registered for under three years.

 (DotPharmacy.com - 3 November 2005)

*Dispensing doctors also employ similar staff.

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Comment

It should be possible to assume that most reporting on the "Dotpharmacy" website is accurate and, of course, this is accurate.   It reports the latest and greatest success of the pharmacy negotiating team, the abandonment of the core reason for their being - the safe and effective dispensing of medicines.

A service which they have shrieked with nauseating insistence could only be carried out by them.  Never more loudly have they shrieked that than when a general practitioner applied to dispense to some of his patients or when a dispensing doctor was attempting to defend his practice.

The following mantra was always trotted out:

"Doctors shall prescribe and pharmacists shall dispense; each to their own special area of expertise and training"

And successive Secretaries of State for Health, who have grown fat on the repeated banquets provided for them by the chemists' organisations, have gullibly supported them.

That has all been opportunistically abandoned as chemists, swelled with their own self-importance as ministers seek to fill the gap in medical manpower seek any jobbing worker to attempt to carry out some of the doctor's tasks, see a glistening future.

The chemists, aided by the recent imbecilic activities of the doctors' GPC and DDA Ltd* have seen to it that dispensing doctors and others who would wish to dispense can, thanks to recent legislation which both GP representative groups volunteered and agreed to, can no longer apply to dispense.  And, of course, cannot take advantage of the pharmacy swollen-headedness.

So, what now have the chemists to lose - other than even more of their credibility.

Of course, it matters little to the chemists that they have no more training than my cat for the community tasks which lie tantalisingly in front of them.  The money lies that way and they won't have to give up any of their dispensing income.  And, after all, a fortnight's distance learning supervised by their colleagues should put that right.

Nor, by the way, have they any training whatsoever, for that other dangerous 'right' they are demanding and which this idiot government is to grant them - the right to prescribe and dispense from the whole of the British Pharmacopoeia.

That, too, goes against the earlier mantra.  But it makes the chemist feel good.

Patients beware of the chemist near you.  He may not know what he is doing.

If the government really wishes to economise it should sack all chemists, they agree they are no longer needed to dispense, and employ less expensive health care workers to carry out the community tasks the chemists are after.  Always assuming, of course, that they are not ones which GPs should be doing.

All dispensing could be carried out, as agreed already by the chemists, by trained technicians with a back-up similar to HealthCall where a limited number of expert pharmacists should be employed.   Rural and "market town" dispensing should continue to be provided by an increasing number of dispensing doctors.  They do it less expensively anyway.

May the pharmacy leaders choke on their hypocrisy.

*I bet the DDA didn't discuss these opportunities they have wantonly squandered, at their Conference this weekend.  Just when there is the most logical opportunity for the expansion of dispensing by doctors, the morons have gone running to the chemists asking them, positively asking them to take away the right of any doctor in future to dispense.  There is absolutely no logical, un-hypocritical argument the chemists has left to oppose dispensing by doctors.  How well they finessed the DDA Ltd and hung them out to dry.

What a spectacularly useless organisation the DDA Ltd is.

(7/11/05)