BIG PICTURE
The decision to stop repeat prescriptions being ordered through community pharmacies is one taken by Eastern Cheshire CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) – not by pharmacists.
Ordering prescriptions on behalf of our patients was a service provided by community pharmacies free of charge in an attempt to help make regular repeat medicines more easily accessible, while at the same time giving patients increased access to a healthcare professional.
We understand people are busy, and with pharmacy opening hours and accessibility, this in-turn gave patients a choice.
As we move to this new system pharmacists remain committed to patient safety and reducing medicines wastage, and we will continue to do all we can to support our patients.
We believe that it is also important to highlight that pharmacists offer the Medicines Use Review (MUR) and New Medicines Service (NMS), both free services to the patient, which the NHS sees as important ways of helping patients understand and get the most out of their medicines.
Many pharmacies also offer a range of local services too. Lee Williams (On behalf of Community Pharmacy Cheshire and Wirral) THIS year in Macclesfield isn’t shaping up too well so far.
Local school budgets are to be trashed as Cheshire East secures the worst education funding deal in the country, faring far worse than Conservative-controlled authorities in the south of England, where most of the Cabinet live.
Unlike Surrey we won’t enjoy a social care ‘sweetheart’ deal either.
We face a £4.7m social care deficit plus further cuts, making it even harder to free up hospital beds.
We could afford decent public services, despite an ageing population, if the 19 million people identified by Rowntree Foundation research as below the ‘Minimum Income Standard’ earned enough to pay a bit more tax.
At, for example £17,900 for a single person in rented accommodation, this standard does not equate to a king’s ransom.
Younger readers may not realise that these are 30-year-old chickens coming home to roost.
As in Germany and elsewhere, some of us in this country thought it was a bad idea to let too many well-paid manufacturing industry jobs go.
Conservative tax cuts, funded by selling, but not replacing council houses – and by botched privatisations now yielding decent profits for companies largely owned by taxpayers from other countries – won elections then, but we pay the price today.
Pension funds in ‘surplus’ then, and deficit now, were raided to pay shareholder dividends.
Older people are not directly to blame for the problems the young face today, but the governments which they elected are – and the next generation of chickens are already incubating in the ‘hard Brexit hatchery’.