The soaring cost of common blood clot medicine is “financially crippling” local pharmacies in Northern Ireland, according to body representing high street pharmacists.
Community Pharmacists NI (CPNI) has reiterated its call for the Department of Health (DoH) to sort out funding arrangements and claimed current levels are resulting in thousands of pounds being lost every single month with many essential medicines being dispensed at a loss.
Costs for several medicines have surged in recent weeks including the price of the commonly prescribed drug Apixaban – used to prevent blood clots – which now costs £36 per pack.
But DoH is currently paying a pharmacy back between £2.21 – £2.48 per pack, resulting in a significant gap in a pharmacy’s finances.
CPNI chief executive Gerard Greene said: “We have been fighting for the basic prices of medicines to be met for far too long, it is a simple principle of fairness.
“It cannot be the case that community pharmacy owners are expected to subsidise Northern Ireland’s medicine bill from their own pockets.
“We know for a fact that some community pharmacy owners have had to borrow money from family members to meet medicine wholesaler bills and earlier this year the representative body for UK medicines wholesalers issued a warning that community pharmacies were struggling to pay their wholesaler bills.
“For a first world health service this is the sorry state of affairs.”
Read more
CPNI said the department temporarily increased the payment for these drugs to £14.99 on the last day of August before reintroducing the lower prices again on September 1 and warned there are typically around 150 lines of medicines affected every month which it said “is both grossly unfair and unsustainable”.
The body says it has been raising issues with the drug payment arrangements “for years” and insisted “it is time for a fair contract for pharmacy owners” during a meeting with Stormont’s new health minister Mike Nesbitt.
It follows the closure of 15 community pharmacies in the past 20 months which CPNI cited as “proof that these businesses are becoming unsustainable” under current funding arrangements – another two pharmacies closed permanently at the end of last month.
Mr Greene said he has identified “two key asks”.
“Firstly, an urgent injection of funding to help community pharmacies pay their medicine bills, and secondly, a longer-term solution in the form of a Northern Ireland specific drug tariff that meets the needs of a modern community pharmacy network, allowing it to take on a greater role in community-based healthcare,” he said.
“What we continuously hear is that there is no money, yet if primary care and community pharmacy was stabilised, community pharmacy can provide solutions to many of the issues facing our health service.
“Community pharmacies provide local, accessible healthcare services in every town and village across Northern Ireland. We can help prevent people from being admitted to hospital. We can help address the bottleneck in General Practice. Community pharmacy is a solution that is ready to be utilised if the will and the resource is there to do it.”
The Department of Health has been contacted for comment.