Countryside Alliance - love the countryside

In many rural areas doctors surgeries have dispensing services which allow patients who live far from pharmacies to pick up prescription medicines. This is particularly important for elderly and less mobile individuals.

The Alliance opposed the proposed changes to the ‘control of entry’ regulations that allow rural practices to dispense prescription medicines to patients. Changes to the control of entry regulations would have altered the distance criteria allowing patients to receive dispensing services - currently based on the distance of a patient’s home to the nearest pharmacy. The proposed changes, unpopular among the medical community, could have disenfranchised up to three million rural patients of their right to get their medicines dispensed at their doctor’s surgery and compromised the viability of up to 1,300 dispensing practices.

The announcement was made in Parliament on 16th December 2008 during oral questions. In response to a question from John Mann MP, Phil Hope MP, Minister of State for Care Services said: “I am aware of the strength of the responses we received on the various options for amending the criteria for dispensing by doctors. We have taken into account the views of those attending the listening events, the meetings and so on, and as a result I am pleased to announce to him that there will be no change to the current arrangements on GPs dispensing medicines to their patients.”

We are encouraged that Government saw no value in reforming current dispensing arrangements that both the medical and pharmacy community have accepted and the rural community benefits from. The Alliance would like to thank all those who responded to the consultation and campaigned to safeguard access to medicine in rural areas.