Pharmacy representatives have praised NHS England’s postponement of the anonymous reporting of safety incidents but warned that pharmacists need reassurance that it is safe to submit reports.
 

The commissioning body’s decision to delay its plans to end anonymous incident reporting until dispensing errors are decriminalised was a “pragmatic move”, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) said. However, Numark warned that reporting levels would remain low.
 

As part of the 2014-15 funding settlement announced in September, PSNC and NHS England agreed that pharmacists should include the name of their pharmacy when submitting an incident report to the National Reporting and Learning System (NRLS). But the negotiator announced last week that the plans would be delayed until inadvertent dispensing errors were decriminalised, which was not expected “before early 2016”.
 

RPS president Ash Soni said NHS England was right to realise that the reporting system could only work if pharmacists felt “confident that if they do report [an incident] they don’t end up in trouble themselves”. Although the likelihood of being prosecuted was “very small”, it was sensible for NHS England to wait until this risk was removed, he told C+D.
 

Numark director of pharmacy services Mimi Lau said its members would remain suspicious of reporting errors for “some time”. NHS England needed to focus on “damage limitation” because the number of incident reports would not return to pre-September levels immediately, she said.
 

Industry leaders raised concerns last year that the planned incident reporting rules could put pharmacists at risk of prosecution, and Pharmacy Voice said it was “reassuring” the commissioning body had listened to the sector’s concerns.
 

Common sense prevails

Community pharmacist Clive Hogdson agreed it had been a “very wise change of mind” by NHS England and proved that “common sense can sometimes prevail”.
 

PSNC said NHS England had decided to postpone anonymous reporting because it wanted the pharmacy contract to be “fully supported” by law. New reporting rules would be introduced as soon as ongoing plans to remove the criminal sanction for inadvertent dispensing errors were completed, PSNC said.
 

A requirement in the funding settlement for pharmacies to increase the number of safety incidents they reported to the NRLS would not be affected by the delay, and PSNC encouraged contractors to “review their current approach to reporting incidents”.
 

The board set up to review medicine law was due to launch a consultation on the decriminalisation of dispensing errors in January 2014, but last month House of Commons leader William Hague said the delayed consultation would happen in “due course”.