Day Lewis chief slams failure to lift MUR cap
NHS England's retention of the annual limit in this year's funding settlement was "budget-driven" at the expense of common sense, says Day Lewis chief executive Kirit Patel
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NHS England's failure to lift the annual cap on MURs was "budget-driven" at the expense of common sense, Day Lewis chief executive Kirit Patel has argued. Patients would be "short-changed" by the decision to keep limiting MURs to 400 a year per pharmacy in the 2014-15 funding settlement, Mr Patel told C+D in an exclusive interview on Wednesday (September 24). He stressed that the "one-size-fits-all, broad-brush policy" was "not right" because it restricted larger pharmacies from providing a full patient service. If MURs had proven benefits then they should be offered to every eligible patient, said Mr Patel, who is also vice-chair of pharmacy negotiator PSNC. "If you have a pharmacy in a market town dispensing 10,000 items and only 400 patients can get an MUR... is that fair to the patient?" he said. Mr Patel argued that the government should either commit to the service fully by lifting the cap or "scrap the thing completely". Mr Patel urged pharmacies to make the most of the service by filling their annual quota. "It's a cardinal sin if a pharmacy does not do its share of 400 MURs," he stressed. Not only did the service benefit patients, but MUR funding was the "easiest money" contractors could earn, Mr Patel said. "It's £11,000 or £12,000 that goes straight to the bottom line for doing two MURs a day," he told C+D. Mr Patel said he accepted NHS England's decision to increase the proportion of MURs delivered to target groups from 50 per cent to 70 per cent. But this should have been combined with "widening the basket" to ensure more MURs could be delivered, he added. Last week, Labour's shadow health secretary Andy Burnham revealed ambitions to expand MURs and give pharmacy a bigger role in monitoring patients' conditions.
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