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Consultation deadline over controversial chemist shops     19/2/14

A consultation over NHS pharmacies services setting up in competition with dispensing GP practices is ending on Thursday.

The Scottish Government plans to lift an “absurd” controversial rule preventing local communities having a say over application to open a commercial pharmacy in their area.

It follows the controversy in Uist when Mohammed Khalil Jamil of Glasgow, applied to open a chemist shop in Benbecula.

Fears arose that it could create a worse service for islanders, particularly the elderly and vulnerable.

Patients between Berneray and South Uist would have been forced to stop getting a one-stop-shop service by seeing a doctor and getting prescription medicine at the GP surgery.

They faced a 60 mile round trip to get a prescription slip in Lochmaddy and travel via causeways and a lengthy public bus service to Benbecula to get treatment drugs at the chemist shop.

Critics maintain such proposed pharmacies would lead to job losses and downgrade doctors’ surgeries if GP would lose the dispensing income they use to subsidise services.

Health minister Alex Neil rushed the consultation forward saying it was “absurd” that communities have “no voice in the application process.”

He told the Scottish Parliament he wants a new system which “takes much more account of what the community needs and wants, instead of allowing large monopolies to dominate proceedings.”

Funding for GPs to dispense medicines to patients invariably stops if a commercial chemist opens in the area.

Doctors say the pharmacy funding helps subsidise the costs of running a GP surgery in rural areas and is essential to maintain the present level of services in rural places.