Government refuses to acknowledge anxiety as patient harm
Pharmacy minister Earl Howe told C+D that the government deals with stock shortages 'very effectively' and that their effect on patients should not be 'exaggerated'
EXCLUSIVEThe government has rejected calls to widen the definition of patient harm to reflect anxiety caused by stock shortages. Patient harm should remain restricted to clinical outcomes and not include the distress experienced when patients were unable to access their medicines, pharmacy minister Earl Howe told C+D in an exclusive interview on Friday (August 1).
The government dealt with shortages "very effectively" and their effect on patients should not be "exaggerated", Earl Howe said at a ground-cutting ceremony for the new Jhoots Pharmacy headquarters in Walsall.
The minister said he did "not accept" the call by the all-party pharmacy group (APPG) last month (July 23) for the government to revise its "narrow" view of patient harm and do more to address stock shortages. The number of shortages was "very few" in the context of the "thousands" of drugs dispensed in the NHS every day, Earl Howe said.
"While distress and worry are regrettable and should be avoided, if a pharmacy doesn't have a particular medicine it will normally be there in a few hours. There are tried and tested processes for pharmacists to access medicines on an emergency basis direct from the manufacturer, and that is what usually happens if there is a delay in delivery," he said.
"No-one wants to see patients inconvenienced, but I think the definition of harm is one that we need to stick to," he added.
Following a round table meeting with pharmacy bodies, manufacturers, wholesalers and the Department of Health (DH) last month, APPG chair Kevin Barron MP warned that the DH's supply forum was failing to address shortages of generic medicines, which could be "disastrous" for patients.
In May, Earl Howe ignored C+D's call for urgent action to resolve medicines shortages, despite evidence from readers of patient harm in three-quarters of cases. He also failed to retract his statement that the current approach to shortages was "working well".
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