< Previous | Contents | Next >

MODERNISING NHS COMMUNITY PHARMACY IN SCOTLAND

SECTION 4: PHARMACEUTICAL LISTS

The Policy Intention

4.1 To strengthen clinical governance, quality assurance and to benefit patients by extending the listing arrangements to pharmaceutical non principals, thereby bringing them within the current framework for the administration and management of family health services in Scotland.

The Need for Change

4.2 NHS Boards are currently required to maintain lists of the names and addresses of the ‘persons, firms or bodies corporate’²⁰ that provide pharmaceutical services in their area. For the purposes of this section, these are collectively referred to as "principals". The list, known as the Board’s ‘pharmaceutical list’, must also detail the pharmaceutical services being provided and the opening hours. Currently, the list does not include pharmacists who have been employed to provide pharmaceutical services (on a permanent or temporary basis) nor does it include pharmacists in training. For the purposes of this section, this group is referred to as "non principals".

4.3 Once on a pharmaceutical list, any principal who breaches his or her terms of service may be referred to a NHS Discipline Committee and a referral may be made to the NHS Tribunal where the practitioner has prejudiced the efficiency of pharmaceutical services or has defrauded, or attempted to defraud, the NHS or other publicly funded health services. Principals are deemed responsible currently for their own acts or omissions and also for those of the non principals they employ.

The Proposals

4.4 It is intended to introduce a requirement that all registered pharmacists who deliver pharmaceutical services in the area of an NHS Board are entered on that Board’s pharmaceutical list. In this way, non principals will become responsible for their own actions or lack of action.

4.5 The same approach has already been taken with GPs and it is also being proposed for dentists and optometrists/ophthalmic medical practitioners. The proposal here would harmonise arrangements across all four family health services.

4.6 In more detail, the proposal is for the pharmaceutical list to be split into two parts. The intention is that principals (whether individuals, appliance suppliers or bodies corporate carrying on a retail pharmacy business) undertaking to provide pharmaceutical services are to be listed in Part A. Each entry will include names of the pharmacist(s) responsible for delivering the service/in charge of service provision at an individual pharmacy.

4.7 Applications from principals to be entered on Part A will require certain undertakings, consents and declarations to confirm their fitness to provide pharmaceutical services under a NHS contract. This will include, for example, confirmation of registration with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain or confirmation that the principal is not subject to national disqualification by the NHS Tribunal.

4.8 Part B would list all non principals i.e. registered pharmacists who will perform NHS contracted pharmaceutical services in a Board area as an employee, a pharmacist in training or on a locum basis. The application requirements for these non principals would be similar to those for entry to Part A of the list.

4.9 Administrative arrangements would be established to enable pharmacists who wish or need to be registered on the lists of other Boards to do so as part on the initial application process at their ‘host’ Board, on a ‘fast track’ basis already developed for listing GPs.

4.10 From the date of implementation of the new arrangements, a pharmacy principal would not be able to employ a pharmacist who was not listed on their local Board’s pharmaceutical list. All listed persons would be individually responsible for their own acts or omissions in the course of providing NHS pharmaceutical services.

Question

• Are there any further actions that would serve to improve clinical governance in the community pharmacy sector and provide patients with an additional quality assurance (e.g. having the clinical component of the contract placed with the named pharmacist providing the service)?

< Previous | Contents | Next >