EX­­CLUSIVE

The government has no deadline for decriminalising dispensing errors, C+D has learned.

The Department of Health (DH) launched a consultation on providing a defence from criminal prosecution for inadvertent dispensing errors last week, but told C+D yesterday (February 17) that it could not predict when the law would be changed.

“After the consultation closes, the DH – in conjunction with other countries in the UK – will analyse and publish the results and take any required policy, regulatory or legislative action to enable implementation,” it said.

The DH is currently one year behind its original timetable. It had planned to launch the consultation last January and its programme board to "rebalance" medicines law had predicted dispensing errors would be decriminalised by the end of 2014, but the project has encountered continued delays.


PSNC chief executive Sue Sharpe told C+D on Monday (February 16) that the negotiator believed the consultation would “get a positive outcome”. “It is good news for us and important for pharmacies,” she said at the Sigma conference in India.

Providing a legal defence from criminal sanctions for pharmacy staff who could show they had acted professionally would also create an “open learning culture”, Ms Sharpe said. “There is a need to improve incident reporting – well, nobody is going to do that if they think it will lead to prosecution," she stressed.

Contractor Dipan Shah, of Angel Pharmacy in Weymouth, said decriminalisation was needed so the profession could share and learn “from real life situations”.

“My worry is how long it will take. I hope they do not take too long [to] actually get people to report their errors,” he told C+D.

Last month, NHS England postponed plans to end the anonymous reporting of patient safety incidents until dispensing errors were decriminalised. PSNC did not expect this to happen before “early 2016”, it said at the time.

Pharmacists have until May 14 to respond to the DH’s consultation online. 

When do you expect the law will be changed?

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