As I said a few weeks ago, the electronic prescription service began in South Tyneside last month with one surgery...
 
Since the beginning of the service, we have received prescription signals every day.
 
The numbers we receive have enabled the staff to familiarise themselves with the changes required; and we quickly absorbed the process into the daily routine. The only hic-cup we had involved repeat dispensing for a weekly MDS...when we processed the first one...it reappeared again...just as it should for the following dispensing - except there was a moment when we wondered if the re-appearance indicated it hadn't been completed properly...
 
The e-prescriptions arrived in a very timely manner - much earlier than paper ones (on one occasion we were on the phone to the doctor and within minutes the prescription appeared in our system).
 
At the end of the month we transmitted the e-prescription signals easily to the PPD - It would be nice to get the payment just as quickly?

It's not fair that pharmacists and their staff are spending long hours sourcing drugs that are in limited supply...its even worse when the result of this is financial loss for contractors...
 
I know of several contractors who, following the DOH guidance, managed to obtain medication from their wholesalers at very high costs last month; only to find on the last day of the month - no NCSO provision, merely a price concession far below what the contractors had paid...Some contractors were out of pocket by considerable sums!
 
I'm really at a loss here...why should community pharmacies be the victim in this - losing huge sums of money in attempts to provide care to patients?
 
In these days of financial hardship, this is simply too much to swallow!
 
Something must be done to prevent shortages of supply leading to huge losses for community pharmacy...changes in NCSO cannot come too quickly!

Most pharmacists will have been asked at some time or another by a patient to have the brand instead of the generic - perhaps the patient will say something like "I don't want those cheap medicines - can I have the brand??"
 
There might be some discussion about payment of taxes, or that only the brand will work, or the consultant said I must have the brand etc...
 
The other day, however a patient said to me "Ok then, I'll pay the difference" - but this puts us in a very strange place indeed...I refused, but let's think about it a bit more...

Having investigated this with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, I obtained the following clarification..
.
"If you were to supply a branded product, and to charge the differential, this could be interpreted as deviating from the charge set within legislation and could be problematic if regulatory/enforcing bodies become involved. This could be compounded by the grouping of the patient if classified as a vulnerable adult. 

Additionally there was some generic private care / NHS patients guidance which was published in 2009 following consultation and widespread discussion.

This is available on the link below

http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_096576.pdf

One of the executive key points was that the “NHS should never subsidise private care” "

So the bottom line is that to take money from patients to give the brand is frowned on and might be thought of as a breach of your terms of service!