EXCLUSIVE

The government has ignored C+D's call for urgent action to resolve medicines shortages, despite readers' evidence of patient harm in three quarters of cases.

In his response to C+D's stock shortages report on Friday (May 16), pharmacy minister Earl Howe urged pharmacists to report any incidents of patient harm but failed to retract his statement that the current approach to shortages is "working well".

Earl Howe said the size of the supply network meant there would "occasionally" be problems with obtaining medicines and that the Department of Health (DH) worked with the supply chain to "mitigate and manage these problems wherever we can".

In the report, submitted to the DH in November, C+D revealed that pharmacists were spending increasing amounts of time trying to get hold of out-stock-drugs and that this was causing suffering to patients.

In a 12-month investigation, 57 per cent of 371 pharmacists who took part in C+D's Stocks Survey said the health of at least one patient had suffered as a result of stock shortages. 

C+D also collected nearly 200 detailed examples of medicines shortages through its online reporting tool. In most instances, pharmacists reported that patients were moderately harmed because the pharmacy could not get hold of their medicines. In 12 per cent of cases, pharmacists felt that patients suffered severe harm.

C+D used this evidence from readers to call for the government to recognise that patients were suffering as a result of stock shortages and to revisit the solutions to supply problems put forward by the all-party pharmacy group (APPG) in 2012. The pharmacy minister had told C+D in August 2012 that pharmacists needed to prove that patients were suffering harm as a result of shortages.

In his response to the report, Earl Howe said patient safety was "paramount" to the NHS and urged pharmacists to report any incidents that had the potential to cause patient harm to its national reporting and learning service database, which it set up in 2003. He did not refer to the information supplied by C+D.

C+D submitted a report to the DH in December that revealed increased suffering to patients as a result of stock shortages	More on stock shortages NHS Alliance calls for independent review on stock shortages PMR codes for stock shortages to be cut C+D calls for urgent action to fix problems in supply chain
	"This information will assist local and national efforts through the mobilisation of medication safety officers (MSOs) in the NHS and independent healthcare sectors," he added.

In March, NHS England and medicines regulator the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) called on multiples to nominate an MSO to join the newly established National Medication Safety Network and the National Devices Safety Network, which aims to improve communication and feedback on reporting medicine safety issues across the health service.

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