PHARMACISTS IN dispute with the Minister for Health over cuts in dispensing fees began reopening their doors yesterday, following the decision by the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) to stop its protest.
The vast majority of pharmacies are expected to be dispensing medication under the State drug schemes by this evening but the Health Service Executive (HSE) said it would continue to operate nine contingency dispensing facilities in the west until services had returned to normal.
Hundreds of pharmacies had remained closed, or partially closed, since August 1st in the row over cost-saving measures introduced by the Government.
In an emergency meeting on Tuesday night, the IPU urged members to immediately resume normal services and said this was in the interests of patient safety.
For legal reasons, pharmacies which had terminated their community pharmacy contractor agreements with the HSE had to sign a letter confirming they were rejoining the agreement, before they could resume filling prescriptions under the State drug schemes.
The HSE said it had written to 470 pharmacies who had terminated their contracts, telling them what to do to resume normal services.
Once they signed and faxed back a letter, they could resume dispensing medicines under the State drug schemes, a HSE spokeswoman said.
Other pharmacists, who had not terminated their contracts but had closed or restricted their opening hours, could immediately resume dispensing.
The spokeswoman said the HSE had received requests from over 120 pharmacies to resume normal services since Monday.
Patrick Burke, head of the HSE’s primary care reimbursement scheme said the HSE was anxious to facilitate pharmacies to resume dispensing medicines under the State drug schemes as quickly as possible.
This was welcomed by the IPU. Its president Liz Hoctor said the union had made some progress in the dispute but Department of Health sources stressed Minister for Health Mary Harney had not changed her position.
Ms Harney adopted a more conciliatory tone towards pharmacists when she spoke on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland yesterday.
She suggested some pharmacies could close because of the reduction in fees and payments, and she accepted it was not easy for any sector to accept cuts to income.
“Nobody accepts that easily or lightly and this is a heavy adjustment for the pharmacy sector. But we introduced the legislation that’s been effective from July 1st and those savings we have to get, and those savings we will get,” Ms Harney said.
She said she knew the reduction in fees would have “a severe impact on those pharmacists that have borrowed a couple of million, perhaps, to open a pharmacy but, quite honestly, no dispensing fees could support what was an unsustainable model. So I’m not suggesting everybody will stay in business . . . I’m not happy that that would be the case. Don’t get me wrong. These are highly educated healthcare professionals.”
Ms Harney also criticised liberal lending practices by banks and said she had heard of cases where more than €2 million was given to pharmacists to open businesses, even though they did not own the properties.
“Clearly that could not be a sustainable model.”
She said she was “very happy” for patients and taxpayers that pharmacists were going back to work.
Fine Gael Senator Frances Fitzgerald welcomed the decision of pharmacists to return to work but asked why the Government was not pursuing savings from manufacturers with the same vigour as applied to pharmacists.
“Fine Gael has demonstrated through comparisons with the UK that generic drugs are vastly over-priced in this country and considerable savings can be made by reducing this cost to the State as well as through the greater use of cheaper generics instead of brand-name drugs,” Ms Fitzgerald said.
“The Minister’s saving of €133 million from community pharmacies, which has caused so much disruption to patients, would be far surpassed by the savings which could be made through exploiting the potential of generics.”
