Community Pharmacy North Yorkshire LPC chief executive officer Jack Davies told C+D last week (January 25) that pharmacy staff work for an estimated “250 hours extra a year, just chasing concessionary prices per pharmacy”.

“These days, pharmacies are having to find £3,000 more per year, just to do all that searching,” he added.

Tracey Chambers, owner of Copmanthorpe Pharmacy, echoed his concerns, telling C+D: “Things are so bad at the moment, my invoices are checked by my dispensers.”

Her dispensers highlight overpriced drugs to report to the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC), she explained.

“I love the bones of my job, but I think I've probably come to the end of my tether with it,” Ms Chambers said.

“It’s not the fact that you're overpaying for a drug, it's the man-hours that you have to put in to try and get it at something that's nearer the mark.”

Staff “religiously filling in” PSNC spreadsheet

PSNC revealed earlier this month that it had discussed changing the system for agreeing price concessions with the Department of Health and Social Care.

In November, the negotiator said it had received “several thousand” reports from contractors struggling with generics supply issues.

Mr Davies said pharmacists are now contacting his LPC about concessionary prices “more than on any other subject in the three years I've been working here”.

Pharmacy staff have been “religiously filling in the spreadsheet on the [PSNC] database” with their overpriced medicine reports, he said.

“I don't know how long I can last”

Ms Chambers’ pharmacy has been spending “huge sums of money” on medicines, she said, citing bicalutamide as “a big one at the moment”.

“It’s not like you can take a hit on [these medicines], you've got to do an awful lot of other dispensing to make up that shortfall,” she said.

Chairman of North Yorkshire LPC and pharmacist Ian Dean said: “I don't know how long I can last if nothing changes.”

For the last three months, the Yorkshire pharmacy Mr Dean manages – one of seven branches in the Yorcare group – has had to cope with “the fact that what we've been paid by the NHS hasn't covered the bills”.

“If anybody leaves, we can't afford to replace them,” he continued. “The rest of the staff are working harder to cover the same services. They don't get paid any more to do it.”

Ms Chambers stressed that pharmacy is “generally a very optimistic profession and very hardworking”. “I've now got to find a bit of energy to keep going,” she added.