Minor plus needed

It was good to see the president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Ash Soni, urging the adoption of a national minor ailments service the other day to ease the pressure on hard-pressed A&E departments and GPs’ surgeries. I would, however, have liked him to have gone a bit further and called for what I will call “MAS Plus”. As things stand, those minor ailments services that are up and running in Britain require the user to be entitled to free prescriptions. What about the rest of the population? As soon as it is announced that there is a national service and then it is added that most of the people can’t use it then it cuts its appeal and usage straight away.

To my mind there should be a service that is available to all. Incidentally, if that means that a notional charge is made for any medicines supplied to those not entitled to free prescriptions that would be OK by me.

The point about having a national service is that it can easily be explained to the public at large. A service available in some places but not others can only lead to confusion. That is why I am also a bit skeptical about the new models of emergency care that may or may not involve pharmacy that NHS England is going to try out. If the so-called “vanguard sites” make full use of the potential of pharmacy and lead to a nationally available service, then that would be all to the good. If they do not, confusion would reign.

But why wait. Minor ailments services have been tried and succeeded already. These particular vanguard sites have already proved the profession’s potential. Let them go nationwide.

Locum rates

One of the big employers is to cut the hourly rates for its locums. I’m not surprised. The pharmacy schools, for reasons of self-interest, are producing too may pharmacists – more than enough to meet demand. Pay rates suffer like night follows day.

Low turnout

Another very low turnout – 11.71 per cent – for the election to the English Pharmacy Board of the RPS.

I’m not surprised. The electorate has hardly anything to go on. We don’t hear much about the candidates and what they get up to. Top of the poll as usual was Sid Dajani, a regular columnist for ICP. I reckon being our columnist boosts his chances of getting elected enormously. At least we know from his writings what he stands for on a variety of topics. For the rest of the candidates – nada!

I read that Sid wants to get rid of sectoral representation on the board. I’m not sure that is wise. The point of having academia, industry, and primary care represented as well as community and hospital pharmacy is to ensure a breadth of view. Even if there is a co-opted person where no candidate offers himself or herself for election in a particular sector, that is better than that sector’s voice not being heard at all. If we drop the sectors we end up with a narrow board of mostly community pharmacists.

Reassuringly, the Welsh board is having none of this and wants to continue with sectoral representation.

Good news?

Pharmacists in England at long last are to be given access to patient’s summary care records on a national basis. This is good news, but only so far as it goes. The information about the patient on the SCR is quite limited — any medicines they are taking, any allergies they suffer from and any bad reactions to medicines that they might have experienced. Nothing about the diagnosis. So pharmacists will pick up useful information about a patient’s medicines but still lack knowledge of the most important thing — what the medicine has been prescribed for in the first place. Patients could have that sort of info added if they choose, but it will be up to them and I doubt if many will take up the option. They can also opt out of having an SCR altogether. So it’s not exactly three cheers for the development. More like one-and-a-half.