Clause 43 - Remote provision of pharmaceutical, etc. services
Health and Social Care Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Desmond Swayne (New Forest West, Conservative)
I do not wish to be a Luddite, but I do have reservations about remote prescribing. I would like the Minister to say a few words about what safeguards there will be because it strikes me that the advantage of the local pharmaceutical services is that they provide a higher-quality service. Many people may have become accustomed to that level of service and have enjoyed it, and the LPS scheme allows greater scope to develop that high quality of service to provide the added value that those pharmacy services can make available to the public.
I wonder whether that added value is available by electronic mail. It is only by consulting the pharmacist that the medicine management that we have discussed today would allow the exploration of the interaction between a medicine that has been prescribed against medicines that were bought over the counter for other conditions. If pharmacy services are provided via electronic mail, is that added value to be had? The danger is that the provisions for remote prescribing have every possibility of denying patients the advantages of local pharmaceutical services. I am looking for reassurance from the Minister on that score—that the problems have been thought about and that safeguards will be in place.