Emergency pharmacies to stay open further week

THE health authority’s emergency dispensing clinics will remain open for at least another week, chief executive Brendan Drumm has confirmed.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) had established dispensing facilities along the western seaboard, which was worst affected by the withdrawal of pharmacists from the State’s drug schemes two weeks ago.

The facilities have so far dispensed more than 25,000 medicines to more than 11,000 patients.

Almost 500 of the country’s 1,600 pharmacists withdrew from the schemes because they were unhappy with fee cuts imposed by the Government under emergency legislation.

On Tuesday night, the Irish Pharmacy Union urged pharmacists to end their protest action in the interest of patient safety.

Prof Drumm, who visited the dispensing facilities in Donegal yesterday, said the HSE had received a huge number of written requests from pharmacies to rejoin the schemes.

He was confident that over the next week or 10 days, the authority could step back from its own contingency plan that had worked well.

“Given the speed with which the nine fully operational dispensaries around the country were fitted out, stocked, computerised, staffed and registered with The Pharmaceutical society of Ireland, they were operating very well,” he said.

Prof Drumm said the authority was not denying that people had to wait for their medicines from the dispensaries during the dispute. Replacing the services of protesting pharmacists, particularly in Donegal had been a huge challenge, he said.

“This has clearly been a difficult time for everyone involved and the challenge for us now is to get community pharmacies dispensing under the State drug schemes as soon as possible.”

Prof Drumm said there was pain taken on all sides but the best way forward was to accelerate the changes started in 2006.

He admitted that the changes in relation to pharmacy services would create challenges for some pharmacies but stressed they were necessary to provide more and higher quality services with less funding.

“This willingness to adapt and change is essential if we are to provide all communities with access to quality services at a cost that is sustainable.”