PHARMACISTS IN Northern Ireland have been advised by their union not to enter into arrangements with the Health Service Executive to dispense medicines to patients in Border counties in coming weeks.
The advice will be a blow to those in the HSE trying to draw up contingency plans to ensure all patients with medical cards will be able to still get their medicines after August 1st when hundreds of pharmacists in the South withdraw service in a dispute over a reduction in fees.
Terry Hannawin, chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Contractors Committee (NI) Ltd, said he had seen advertisements in Northern Irish newspapers taken out by the HSE seeking expressions of interest from community pharmacies in the north to provide a medicines dispensing service during the dispute.
“We cannot recommend that pharmacy contractors in Northern Ireland participate in the scheme proposed in these newspaper advertisements,” he said, adding that the proposal presented “all sorts of practical and technical problems, safety issues and possible legal barriers”.
More than 1,000 pharmacists in the Republic, who attended a mass meeting in Dublin yesterday called by the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU), also urged the HSE and Minister for Health Mary Harney to talk to them about finding a resolution. IPU president Liz Hoctor said: “Our door is open and our minds are not closed.”
Stephen McMahon of the Irish Patients Association said patients should not be used as pawns in the dispute. Ms Harney aims to save €133 million a year by imposing a cut in fees for pharmacists and while Mr McMahon said savings were required, he said ideally these must be negotiated.
Labour’s health spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan also called for talks to try to resolve the dispute.
She said “the hit” the pharmacists were being asked to take in one fell swoop was one that any business, in these difficult times, would find hard to sustain.
Pharmacists attending the rally in Dublin condemned Ms Harney’s adversarial approach. Tim Delaney, a pharmacist at Tallaght hospital, said a study had found 60 per cent of prescriptions issued to patients being discharged from hospital contained mistakes and community pharmacists played a vital role in picking these up which was not being acknowledged.
Former Progressive Democrats member and senator John Minihan, who owns a pharmacy, condemned his former party leader Ms Harney for refusing to engage with the IPU. He said she had refused to answer a number of questions around the dispute, including why there was not more generic prescribing. Attempts were being made to introduce the changes through bullying and spin, he added.
Ms Harney reiterated that dispensing fees to pharmacists had doubled since 2002 and were unsustainable. She also said she planned to introduce a system of “reference pricing” next year.
This will see the HSE only paying for certain generic drugs under State schemes, and if branded drugs are then prescribed by GPs patients will have to pay the additional cost themselves.
The HSE and the Department of Health have been asked to come up with a model for implementing this.
Meanwhile, the HSE has said it will be taking on some extra staff to cover the outlets it is setting up to dispense drugs in areas where community pharmacists are withdrawing from dispensing drugs to patients under State schemes in 10 days time. As of last night it said 867 pharmacies will still be providing a service on August 1st.
State schemes from which the other 776 pharmacies are withdrawing, it says, include the medical card, long-term illness and methadone maintenance schemes.