Minister for Health Mary Harney said this evening she was concerned vulnerable patients were facing “unfortunate and avoidable” delays in the supply of their medicines due to the withdrawal of services by certain pharmacists.
Ms Harney said she had been informed that, in some cases, medical card patients had being charged for their medicines in contravention of the State’s community drugs contract.
As the dispute over cutbacks in fees to pharmacists caused major delays at chemists and HSE dispensaries across the country today, Ms Harney urged the Health Service Executive to bring legal proceedings against pharmacies found in breach of contract to supply prescriptions under the State’s drugs schemes.
She said: “We will not allow contracts made for patients to be ignored or cherry-picked".
“For pharmacies in contract, there can be no charges for medical card patients or inappropriate closing of pharmacies and refusal to provide medicines under contracted services in a timely way”.
"Where there are instances of the service not continuing in full by pharmacists who are in contract, the HSE must, on behalf of patients, use every possible means, including enforcement through the Courts, to ensure
contracts are implemented in full, in every respect," she said.
The Irish Pharmacy Union tonight called for the appointment of a third party to review impact of cuts. IPU president Liz Hoctor said she believed the majority of pharmacists would restore full services quickly if Ms Harney agreed to such an appointment.
Ms Hoctor also reiterated her "grave concerns" that a patient may die over the coming days because, she claimed, the HSE contingency plans are "clearly inadequate" to cope with the current situation. "The chaos can't be allowed to continue," she said.
The IPU said earlier that many patients were suffering long delays in getting prescriptions as pharmacies struggled to deal with the backlog.
Chairman of the IPU contracts committee John Corr said many pharmacies were close to “breaking point” and said the IPU had received reports of long delays at pharmacies across the country. Some patients were facing up to four-day delays in areas of Waterford and Kilkenny, he said.
He said his union had also received complaints that HSE dispensaries did not have commonly used medicines and prescriptions were being incorrectly filled.
“The pressure on these dispensaries and other pharmacies is unsustainable and could well lead to errors. In one case in Tralee, a woman was given anti-depressant medicine instead of anti-inflammatory," he said.
Mr Corr also claimed the HSE had been forced to courier medicines to various parts, in one case from Dublin to Mayo, at great expense.
Intensifying the war of words, the HSE today accused certain pharmacists of conducting a “concerted campaign” to disrupt prescription services for patients on State drug schemes. It said the withdrawal of services by certain Donegal pharmacies was designed to “inflict maximum hardship” on the community.
The HSE also condemned what it described as “the sensationalisation of hardship” by IPU.
In a statement, the HSE said the withdrawal of services by certain community pharmacists in Donegal had caused major disruption of services and inconvenienced many people in the county. It said 15 pharmacies in Donegal including those in Ballyshannon, Falcarragh and Letterkenny had contracts with the HSE to provide services under the State drug schemes.
In addition, the HSE said it was operating three contingency locations to dispense medicines in Donegal Town, Dungloe and Stranorlar.
But it said it was not possible to complete fully all prescriptions on the same day in many areas due to the volume of activity or in a small number of cases availability of specific items of stock.
According to the HSE, almost 500, or just under a quarter of all chemists, have withdrawn from the State scheme over €133 million cutbacks in fees to pharmacists introduced last month, while about 1,100 are still operating.
Yesterday, the HSE sent a letter to certain pharmacists warning that any pharmacy with an agreement which is not open for State drug schemes business during normal working hours or which refuses to fill prescriptions from any patient is breaching its legal obligation and deliberately neglecting its duty of care.