Madam, - The tone of your Editorials of March 5th ("The wrong prescription") and March 7th ("Reports on the health service") could not be more different.
In the first, the HSE is seen as an organisation to be pitied because of the "immense pressure" the pharmacist lobby has put on it. In the second, the same organisation is "bloated", with "systemic weakness of governance, management and communication". You go on to say that "primary healthcare in the community has been trumpeted as the answer to overcrowded hospitals, but that funding has been so reduced that patients are forced to remain in hospitals because basic services cannot be provided at home."
I am a community pharmacist in Sutton, Dublin and part of the local primary healthcare team. I provide support and advice to elderly patients in the community, helping them to get services. I deliver medicines to their homes. I spend time explaining what their medicines are for and how they should be taken. If a patient finds managing their medicines difficult I blister-pack their tablets to be taken at different times during the day. My most vulnerable patients have my mobile number and, as I live locally, I invite them to phone me at any time should they need additional support. These are some of the services that the proposed cutbacks in reimbursement to pharmacies will curtail.
During the current impasse I have attempted to reassure my elderly patients when they ask me about withdrawal of services. For six months I have assured them that it will not come to that - that at the eleventh hour everyone will get together in a room until 6am and hammer out a solution. The deadline of March 1st has now passed. The HSE refuses to engage and refuses to talk but seems determined to impose its unilateral, unnegotiated changes to my contract. I am now considering what was previously unthinkable - a decision to withdraw from Government drug schemes.
A real effort by a reputable newspaper such as your own to go beyond the spin, to understand the current reimbursement structure to retail pharmacies and to report on the real impact of proposed cuts might help to push the current stand-off towards a resolution. Inaccurate, biased Editorials such as that of March 5th only serve to exacerbate an already bitter dispute. - Yours, etc,
ROISIN McGLOUGHLIN,
Claremont,
Howth, Co Dublin.