The news that an estimated 200 000 patients are at risk because of inaccurate data in their Care Records has led to GP leaders calling for an immediate halt to the Governments Summary Care Record programme. What's worse, the majority of these care records have been created and uploaded without patients consent.
It appears that the gaps and innacuracies, such as wrong medication or allergies result largely from operators not having the required smart cards to gain access to the system.
Some PCT areas and some LPCs are promoting the requirement of smart cards for pharmacists as mandatory, others are not remotely interested, creating wide differences in day to day working practices accross the country. Add to this the shambolic approach to facilitating the issue of smart cards by different PCTs, it might just be that as the new government decides to save billions of pounds and scrap failing IT projects, this dislocated approach to smart card issue and use accross professions mirrors that of PCTs, may result in the whole project falling flat on ITs feet.
This is not because it doesn't work - it clearly does when set up properly and people get involved. It's that bad old bueracracy again. If only organisations like the NHS stopped running themselves to suit the organisations priorities and focussed on patients priorities, huge and expensive messes like the Summary Care Records fiasco might be avoided and nmore importantly, patients might feel the NHS is there for their benefit.
For years when we have been working with PCTs, Nightingale Pharmacy Services have always striven to get PCTs to understand that pharmacists work accross several PCT boundaries and they need to recognise that patients do too. Trying to get some of the PCT staff to understand that pharmacists can't deliver the patient care they want if the PCT doesn't understand that we work in this way and do nothing to support us and enable us to provide the services we want to.
At least with pharmacy we know where we stand - if we give poor service, the patient can always vote with their feet and go somewhere else. So people are smart and can react accordingly. Cards are not smart.
Saturday 17 July 2010
Friday 2 July 2010
this twittering world
"Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude"
Not my words, you understand, those of T. S. Eliot who was obviously onto something. If twittering ws good enough for Eliot, I suppose it's good enough for me. Don't think he would have settled for 140 characterrs, though.
The full text is from a quartet of poems, "Burnt Norton". Something to make you stop and think though I don't think it will class as CPD but......
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude"
Not my words, you understand, those of T. S. Eliot who was obviously onto something. If twittering ws good enough for Eliot, I suppose it's good enough for me. Don't think he would have settled for 140 characterrs, though.
The full text is from a quartet of poems, "Burnt Norton". Something to make you stop and think though I don't think it will class as CPD but......
Thursday 1 July 2010
Shooting ourselves in both feet.
So, there we have it. The first salvos that tell us we're in for our own winter of discontent. The propoganda war starts today. Not that Pharmacists will (or should) go on strike, and yes, despite a typo error on my Profile on our "new project", as I'm not 31 years old and was 18 in the year Thatcher came to power, I do remember the original "winter of discontent" and Britain being the "sick man of Europe). Happy days!
The news that GP's are likely to see their pay cut by a quarter can only be bad news for pharmacy.
http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=4126456&cid=Latest_headlines_1_010710
It's a line in the sand that multiples in particular will clutch and hold on to for grim death, noting that despite the "recession" (aka "a time when people don't buy what they don't need") one of them has posted third year double digit profits. Times must be tough!
We have been advised that one of them is cutting a pound an hour off all locum rates in mid-September, or a 4.54% pay cut BEFORE inflation and IGNORING the 6% year on year prescription volume increase they are likely to get just by organic growth, ignoring again self generated growth (if they have any). So, 6% more work for you for 4.54% LESS pay. Doesn't seem fair, does it? But we're all having to share the pain, aren't we, I hear you say. Not really, we say. Double digit growth means more than 10 %, so somewhere, someone doesn't understand percentages. It could be worse, we could do it in fractions. Ah! I hear you sigh. So what's the answer?
We've said it before and we'll say it again. Vene, Vedi, Vici.
I said we'd been around for a long time. I came, I saw, I conquered. But who thought of Divide and rule? Works every time.
We have terms and conditions, like everyone else. It doesn't matter if some pharmacists break them, does it? Book direct through us and don't tell the agency, and you'll be better off, trust me! Nudge nudge, wink wink. And you're better off! Miraculous! Whilst it lasts, then the calls dry up, then you've no work, then they say, "Tell you what, seeing it's you, we'll do you a favour". You breathe a sigh of relief, before choking at what comes next. "We've had to drop the rates though, you understand, there's a recession on" You fall silent. "Of course, if you don't want it, we've got locums and other agencies queuing up for it...". Then, finally ,despite everything we've told you, you finally realise the truth. You've been mugged. Take a couple of pounds an hour pay cut or get no work. No brainer. Not really - the no-brainer was not listening to our years of experience.
Still, no one died. True, but that's only because pharmacists in the main don't have guns. Human beings normally shoot themselves in the foot. I must have missed those sessions at Uni which taught the rest of my colleagues how to use a gun, since too many are superb when it comes to shooting ourselves in both feet.
In case anyone reading this masitakes these observations for bitterness, forget it. We've been around for over 16 years doing this, and we know how it works, so bitterness was overcome by reality many years ago. Frustration, though, that it always seems to end this way? You could be onto something there. Answer? In the name of everything that is Holy, do not give Pharmacists guns, or we've all had it!
The news that GP's are likely to see their pay cut by a quarter can only be bad news for pharmacy.
http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=4126456&cid=Latest_headlines_1_010710
It's a line in the sand that multiples in particular will clutch and hold on to for grim death, noting that despite the "recession" (aka "a time when people don't buy what they don't need") one of them has posted third year double digit profits. Times must be tough!
We have been advised that one of them is cutting a pound an hour off all locum rates in mid-September, or a 4.54% pay cut BEFORE inflation and IGNORING the 6% year on year prescription volume increase they are likely to get just by organic growth, ignoring again self generated growth (if they have any). So, 6% more work for you for 4.54% LESS pay. Doesn't seem fair, does it? But we're all having to share the pain, aren't we, I hear you say. Not really, we say. Double digit growth means more than 10 %, so somewhere, someone doesn't understand percentages. It could be worse, we could do it in fractions. Ah! I hear you sigh. So what's the answer?
We've said it before and we'll say it again. Vene, Vedi, Vici.
I said we'd been around for a long time. I came, I saw, I conquered. But who thought of Divide and rule? Works every time.
We have terms and conditions, like everyone else. It doesn't matter if some pharmacists break them, does it? Book direct through us and don't tell the agency, and you'll be better off, trust me! Nudge nudge, wink wink. And you're better off! Miraculous! Whilst it lasts, then the calls dry up, then you've no work, then they say, "Tell you what, seeing it's you, we'll do you a favour". You breathe a sigh of relief, before choking at what comes next. "We've had to drop the rates though, you understand, there's a recession on" You fall silent. "Of course, if you don't want it, we've got locums and other agencies queuing up for it...". Then, finally ,despite everything we've told you, you finally realise the truth. You've been mugged. Take a couple of pounds an hour pay cut or get no work. No brainer. Not really - the no-brainer was not listening to our years of experience.
Still, no one died. True, but that's only because pharmacists in the main don't have guns. Human beings normally shoot themselves in the foot. I must have missed those sessions at Uni which taught the rest of my colleagues how to use a gun, since too many are superb when it comes to shooting ourselves in both feet.
In case anyone reading this masitakes these observations for bitterness, forget it. We've been around for over 16 years doing this, and we know how it works, so bitterness was overcome by reality many years ago. Frustration, though, that it always seems to end this way? You could be onto something there. Answer? In the name of everything that is Holy, do not give Pharmacists guns, or we've all had it!
They don't like it up@em!
..as Corporal Jones would say.
It appears that some of our Members of Parliament don't like their new expenses system. Apparently, they have to pay for their expenses up front, keep receipts, then try to claim their expenses back and it's simply not on, according to M.P.'s.
So, let's consider this for a moment. M.P.'s, who are paid by us, who raise money through taxes on us which we pay by having to submit details of income and expenses via Her Majestys Revenue and Customs, don't like the fact that they (like us) have to pay for expenses they incur in respect of their work, and have to claim the money back. At least they get it back! How much does your accountant allow through on the basis that "the Revenue don't like that"?
Then there's the issue that some of have to contend with, VAT returns, tax returns, PAYE/NIC records and payments, SSP/SMP/SPP, which are usually done outside of work hours, aka Sunday.
At least our hard pressed M.P.'s have an army of people to help them -77 in total, managing the claims of 600 or so M.P.'s. We have to pay our accountants, they aren't provided to us like the M.P.S's get.
Maybe they can find time to pass less stupid laws in the next few years, as they'll be too busy to work in Paliament for having to reclaim the second home allowance! Whilst they're at it, maybe they could repeal a few laws or bring them into line with others.
Let's start here - if an M.P. makes a mistake, they should face a jail sentence, with maybe a warning only if they make a single mistake. That would bring them into line with us Pharmacists, who can be jailed for a dispensing error.
Alternatively, they could change the law to stop us being prosecuted for a mistake. Maybe we would all sleep a little better then. What has the New Professional Body got to say about this idea? Have they raised this matter with our M.P.'s?
We're waiting.........
It appears that some of our Members of Parliament don't like their new expenses system. Apparently, they have to pay for their expenses up front, keep receipts, then try to claim their expenses back and it's simply not on, according to M.P.'s.
So, let's consider this for a moment. M.P.'s, who are paid by us, who raise money through taxes on us which we pay by having to submit details of income and expenses via Her Majestys Revenue and Customs, don't like the fact that they (like us) have to pay for expenses they incur in respect of their work, and have to claim the money back. At least they get it back! How much does your accountant allow through on the basis that "the Revenue don't like that"?
Then there's the issue that some of have to contend with, VAT returns, tax returns, PAYE/NIC records and payments, SSP/SMP/SPP, which are usually done outside of work hours, aka Sunday.
At least our hard pressed M.P.'s have an army of people to help them -77 in total, managing the claims of 600 or so M.P.'s. We have to pay our accountants, they aren't provided to us like the M.P.S's get.
Maybe they can find time to pass less stupid laws in the next few years, as they'll be too busy to work in Paliament for having to reclaim the second home allowance! Whilst they're at it, maybe they could repeal a few laws or bring them into line with others.
Let's start here - if an M.P. makes a mistake, they should face a jail sentence, with maybe a warning only if they make a single mistake. That would bring them into line with us Pharmacists, who can be jailed for a dispensing error.
Alternatively, they could change the law to stop us being prosecuted for a mistake. Maybe we would all sleep a little better then. What has the New Professional Body got to say about this idea? Have they raised this matter with our M.P.'s?
We're waiting.........
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