NHS Claims Due To Drug Shortages
Profit-led drug shortage exposed
The Department of Health has reacted strongly against the discovery that a NHS trust sold drugs for export to Europe, making a profit of £300,000. This has come to light at a time when certain drugs and medicines are in short supply, raising concerns about profiteering within the NHS.
The scheme has seen the Royal Surrey County Hospital selling drugs to Europe, primarily because the weak pound allows pharmacists to sell at high prices. The hospital admitted that in 2009 it did around £4.6 million worth of business with wholesalers in the European medicine market. However, at the same time, it has been revealed that there was a shortage of at least 40 well-known drugs used to treat conditions such as high blood pressure, epilepsy and breast cancer. But what do these events tell us about the attitudes that some pockets of the NHS seem to have, when it comes to prioritising people or profits?
Nicholas Jervis, Managing Director of compensation specialists, 1stClaims, believes that there could be a danger in attempting to run the NHS as a business; “The main priority of any business is profit,” he explains. “The NHS was set up as a service to the public, not as an organisation that survives through profiteering. Subscribing to the ‘business notion’ of the NHS means that there is a danger that valuable supplies such as drugs become seen as commodities rather than tools with which to help the sick,” he continues.
There is also the suggestion that selling drugs overseas could put UK patients’ lives at risk. Selling vital medicines in quantities as large as these could put a sudden and quite severe strain on NHS resources, depriving patients of drugs when they need them the most.. If this is the case, patients who suffer in these circumstances could have legitimate reason to pursue medical negligence claims.
Lives at risk
These concerns are seemingly borne out by the Director of Policy for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, David Pruce, who says that patients’ lives are being put at risk. “We’re already seeing patients going without their medicines for days and potentially weeks,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before it becomes much more serious.” This would certainly seem to be the case for Marion Wilkes from Oxfordshire. According to a report by the BBC, Marion, a breast-cancer sufferer, is taking medicines to regulate her hormones. Over the last few months, she reports that she’s been having trouble getting her prescriptions and it is only due to the diligence of her pharmacist that she has been able to get any medication at all. She said: “I don’t want to get a recurrence of my cancer - but if you miss out on your drugs, that leaves an opening for it to come back.”
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain says that both wholesalers and manufacturers are limiting the supplies that they provide to individual pharmacies. The result is that when pharmacists have dispensed their supplies and require more, they have to take the time to negotiate a further supply, which can take weeks to arrive. All of this leaves the potential for patients to suffer a deterioration in their condition and the potential ramifications of putting profit before patient care could be one that leaves the NHS wide open to a string of legal cases for compensation. “It’s an entirely preventable situation,” says Nicholas Jervis. “The drugs are available, but due to a profit mentality, they are not reaching the patients they were designed to help. This could put the NHS in a very unsound position should someone decide to use this as the basis for a compensation case,” he concludes.
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