Pharmacists warn of chaos as they pull out of drugs scheme

PHARMACISTS are predicting chaos tomorrow when they are scheduled to pull out of the community drugs schemes.

About 900 local pharmacies have warned they will not be filling prescriptions for medical card holders and patients reliant on drug subsidies in their dispute with the Health Service Executive (HSE) over cuts in their reimbursement payments.

Talks between the HSE and the Irish Pharmacy Union (IPU) continued for a second day yesterday, but had failed to produce a resolution by last night and fears were growing that the withdrawal of services would not be averted.

An IPU spokeswoman described yesterday’s talks as “disappointing” given that the previous day’s had been viewed as constructive. “The communication channels remain open and efforts will continue to find a process of resolving the issues but the contacts so far today have been disappointing,” she said.

Employee pharmacists meanwhile called on the Minister for Health to intervene in the dispute before a “crisis” erupted tomorrow morning.

Spokesman Fearghal O’Nia said pharmacies which were not involved in the action could anticipate an unmanageable volume of business.

“This is simply not safe. Patient safety could be compromised due to the increased likelihood of mistakes being made by pharmacists due to the extra workload and a lack of patient medication records,” he said.

“There could also be crowd control issues with so many patients attending so few pharmacies. There is also likely to be shortages of medicines in these pharmacies.”

He said he had little confidence in HSE claims to have contingency plans to deal with the situation.

The HSE is urging patients to ring an information line to find out the location of the nearest pharmacist who is filling prescriptions or to make “alternative arrangements” to access medicines, but it would not say what those alternative arrangements might be. All hospitals have internal pharmacies but they are not equipped or staffed to deal with public callers.

A HSE spokesman said it was continuing to review its contingency plans.

“However, if the IPU are really concerned about patients and the public then they would desist from taking actions which directly affect vulnerable patients in the pursuit of what is a financial objective,” he said. He added that contacts with the IPU would continue although it is understood there is no face-to-face meeting scheduled for today.

lThe HSE information line can be contacted at 1850 241850.