Pharmacy leaders have defended an NPA scheme that allows the dispensing of 16 prescription-only medicines (POMs) without a prescription after the Department of Health (DH) and GPs raised concerns over the safety of the service.

The NPA, which developed the private patient group direction (PGD) service with Day Lewis, said it was "confident" that its "protocols improve access for people genuinely in need", after the DH requested a meeting to discuss the scheme.

Day Lewis, which has been piloting the scheme in pharmacies since October, also said it was confident that it was "both accessible and robust". 

The DH has requested a meeting with the NPA and Day Lewis to ensure patient safety was "not compromised" by the PGD	More on POMs NPA service makes 16 POMs available without script Get your POMs on eBay Essex pair convicted for £500,000 illegal POM sale
	The comments came after the DH said last week that chief pharmaceutical officer Keith Ridge had requested a meeting with the NPA and Day Lewis to discuss the PGD scheme. It was important to ensure patient safety was "not compromised" by "getting medicines from other sources", a DH spokesperson said.

And "particular caution should be exercised in the use of antibiotics," the DH added. "Pharmacists should consider whether their inclusion in a patient group direction is absolutely necessary. This will make sure strategies to combat increasing antibiotic resistance are not put at risk."

But NPA director of pharmacy Deborah Evans said the scheme was "minimising" the risk of patients over-using antibiotics and patient feedback had so far been good.

She told C+D that the DH had requested further information about the four antibiotics featured in the PGD service and therefore, "as courtesy to the DH", participating pharmacies are not for now supplying trimethoprim, Zithromax, doxycycline and Ciproxin.

The British Medical Association's General Practitioners Committee (GPC) also raised concerns about the inclusion of asthma inhalers in the scheme. Chair of GPC's clincial and prescribing committee, Dr Bill Beeby said asthma patients could "run into trouble" if they weren't given the correct medical advice. 

"It's about being able to access appropriate medical advice, which is prevention rather than just [access to] a reliever. This is not an idle concern," he told C+D. 

But the NPA said it was about "emergency supply only". 

"This service helps to ensure patnnets have access to an important medicine for their symptom control, but they must have already been taking ventolin to qualify," Ms Evans said.