In News

Follow this topic

Bookmark

Record learning outcomes

The Government has warned pharmacy owners they will be breaking the law if they do not dispense medicines that they are making a financial loss on as pharmacies across England continue to bear the brunt of increasing drug prices.

The Department of Health and Social Care told Independent Community Pharmacist that dispensing at a loss was “not a valid reason for refusing to dispense” even though the dispensing of loss-making medicines is putting a huge financial strain on community pharmacy which is already operating to a £2.6 billion funding black hole.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) chair Olivier Picard recently said the NPA and Independent Pharmacies Association had come together to explore if there is any legal scope allowing pharmacies to refuse to supply medicines which cost them more to stock than they are reimbursed for, especially if it impacts “the ability of someone to run a business” or “leads to pharmacy closures”.

Picard said the two organisations were looking at legal advice to assess whether pharmacies would be breaching their terms of service and risk losing their NHS contracts if they refused to dispense.

However, the Government emphatically ruled that out, insisting the regulations that “clearly” set out the circumstances when pharmacists can legally refuse to dispense do not include dispensing at a loss. Paragraph nine of the National Health Service (Pharmaceutical and Local Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 2013 state why a pharmacy may or must refuse to dispense.

That includes when a pharmacist reasonably believes that it is not a genuine order for the person named on the prescription, if there is an error on the prescription, if it is incomplete, if the prescriber was not entitled to prescribe and if pharmacy staff are subjected to or threatened with violence by the individual presenting the prescription.

A DHSC spokesperson said: “Pharmacies have a legal obligation to dispense all valid prescriptions presented to them. Dispensing at a loss is not a valid reason for refusing to dispense – permitted reasons for refusal are clearly set out in regulations.

“The community pharmacy reimbursement arrangements do not guarantee to reimburse each contractor for every individual item that’s the same amount or more than it cost them to secure the product.

“However, concessionary prices mitigate the losses for individual products and the medicine margin arrangements ensure that overall pharmacy contractors are paid more than the cost of their purchases.”

Pharmacy leaders have for years been deeply concerned about the impact “a broken reimbursement system” is having on pharmacies. Picard said he was “losing tens of thousands” of pounds “doing 7,000 items” across his four pharmacies. Last month, he said the cost of some commonly prescribed medicines had risen 14 to 15 times since the start of the year.

Get in touch with your views by emailing neil.trainis@1530.com