A Welsh MS has called for a review of medicines reimbursement for pharmacies that she says are “constantly being paid less” than they spend procuring drugs.
In a Senedd debate on the sustainability of community pharmacies yesterday, Reform UK MS Claire Archibald asked First Minister of Wales Rhun ap Iorwerth if the government would “review how pharmacies are reimbursed for medicines” and “take action when they are constantly being paid less than the medicines cost them”.
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“They tell me they are regularly dispensing medicines for less than they pay for them. How is that fair?” she asked.
“And how can we expect them to keep absorbing these losses alongside rising staffing and running costs?”
Archibald added that pharmacies “are pillars of our community” and the country “cannot afford to lose” them.
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Ap Iorwerth did not answer Archibald’s question directly and instead highlighted the expansion of the minor ailments scheme as one of the “positive steps” taken in recent years to emphasise community pharmacy as “a first contact point for more and more people”.
He said the sector is “absolutely essential” in the shift towards prevention and care closer to home.
And he added that “in the context of falling funds as a result of the UK government”, the Welsh government will focus on “how we can work as positively as we possibly can” to utilise community pharmacy and “make sure that we get money to the front line”.
“Business end of health”
Plaid Cymru MS Lindsay Whittle asked the First Minister what MSs can do to “stabilise” the community pharmacy network and further improve the public’s awareness of services offered by pharmacies.
Ap Iorwerth said all MSs can “play a part” in improving the public awareness of pharmacy services, and noted that the Help Us Help You campaign enabled pharmacies to better advertise what they can offer to patients.
He told Whittle the “key” to the sector’s sustainability is to “expand clinical services”, because community pharmacy is “at the business end of health within our communities”.
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Labour MS Mike Hedges asked whether the government would increase the number of treatments pharmacies can prescribe, and ap Iorwerth said it would be “a mistake by any government not to work very closely with community pharmacy to see what can be expanded”.
“We have now more direct prescribers within community pharmacy – that is the direction of travel that we want to continue on,” he added.
And Conservative MS Natasha Asghar asked how the government would reverse the fall in the number of community pharmacies in Wales, with the network now standing at 683 compared to 716 in 2019.
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Ap Iorwerth responded that it is important for the government to “maintain and support pharmacies as a beating heart of town centres”, adding that they “play a key role” in driving footfall on Welsh high streets.
It comes after Community Pharmacy Wales revealed in September that almost two-thirds of Welsh pharmacies’ financial positions have “worsened compared with the previous year”.
And it follows a survey in August revealing that 95% of patients rated Wales’s common ailments service as excellent.
