Government Re-Thinks Position on Hub-and-Spoke in Pharmacy
The government has announced that it is delaying plans to introduce legislation that would have seen the expansion of hub-and-spoke pharmacy dispensing, following pressure from retail pharmacy representatives that questioned the evidence behind the move.
The Facts
The government has been consulting on widespread changes to retail pharmacy which would see budgets cut and the introduction of legislation on 1 October 2016 which would encourage independent pharmacy to operate a new dispensing regime - automated dispensing hubs.
Automated dispensing is part of the hub-and-spoke model, whereby medicines are dispensed through centralised hubs and then delivered to retail pharmacies that act as spokes, with the spoke pharmacies playing a lesser role. The government had believed this would reduce errors and improve efficiencies, but community pharmacy had fought against this model, saying that there was a lack of evidence to support the government's position.
Alistair Burt, the Pharmacy Minister, has now said that responses to the hub-and-spoke consultation had raised issues, which meant the Department of Health (DH) was going to delay its plans.
Ian Strachan, Chair of the National Pharmacy Association, who has led the argument, said:
"The Department of Health has listened to the growing chorus of concern in and around the pharmacy sector on this issue. We are naturally delighted that the Department is going back to the drawing board, which has been our request from the outset. It’s to the credit of Ministers and officials that they have shifted the position in response to overwhelming evidence and reasoned arguments.
"We now hope that they will show the same degree of mature reflection in relation to other elements of their proposals. The entire policy package foisted on the sector in December, should now be sense checked in the light of this development. At the very least, it surely calls into question the timing of the proposed funding cuts, which the DH has suggested could be absorbed because of the supposed cost savings from hub-and-spoke."