- Date added:
- Thursday, 23 September 2010
- Last revised:
- Thursday, 23 September 2010
Answer
There are already a few companies, well financed and well connected, aiming to sign up your customers for their own repeat prescription service such as Pharmacy2u and GP Care. Many local pharmacies are using the 100 hour exemption rule to set up additional internet only pharmacies to provide local repeat prescription and delivey services. They are aggressively marketing themselves and once a customer has nominated them to collect prescriptions it will be very hard to get them back.
You may also have heard of My Repeats … although useful for marketing, solely relying on this service to offer on-line ordering of repeats is dangerous as the customer has a relationship with My Repeats, not you and can choose another pharmacy … the prime relationship is still with the GP who can still suggest sending the prescription to a competitor. Already there are plenty of anecdotal local reports of GPs doing completely illegal “sweetheart” deals with a favoured local or web pharmacy either for profit or for local convenience (where the GP encourages the patients to use the nearest pharmacy to the surgery)
If you use Scriptserve from Nexphase, again, your are surrendering control of the ordering process to Cegedim and if you change PMR provider, what then?
Also GPs are trying to muscle in on your business. See this recent article for C&D
GPS' PHARMACY 100-HOUR CONTRACTS ‘COULD DESTABILISE COMMUNITY PHARMACY SECTOR’ Doctors exploiting exemptions for 100-hour and remote pharmacy contracts to open their own dispensaries could destabilise the community pharmacy network, experts have warned. Contractors also expressed concerns that the moves could lead to prescriptions being directed towards the GP-owned pharmacies. And they said patients would not get the level of service they should from remote pharmacies, as they offer no enhanced services. PSNC confirmed it was investigating the matter, using freedom of information legislation to determine whether there had been a rise in contract applications from GPs. There are concerns a surge in applications could be seen before legislation makes pharmaceutical needs assessments (PNAs) the basis for pharmacy market entry. Tony Mottram, Numark’s managing director, said: “The current roles of GPs and pharmacists are clear: GPs should diagnose and prescribe and pharmacists should dispense – otherwise there is potential for conflict of interest.” And he warned an upsurge in GP applications could upset the stability of pharmacy. One contractor told C+D: “We are seeing many more GPs jealously eyeing the potential to open their own pharmacies.” He warned this could give doctors an incentive to “churn out more and more prescriptions”. “What we need is for the pharmaceutical needs assessments to bed in pretty quickly,” he added. PSNC echoed the concerns about an increase in the number of applications from GPs entering the market. Head of regulation Steve Lutener said: “We have been pressing for a moratorium on the 100-hour application exemption; however the Department of Health has said you can’t have a moratorium without consultation, and if you do that you will stimulate applications.”