The beleaguered Jhoots Pharmacy chain, which has been drawing widespread flak for reported unpaid staff wages and frequent closures, may now sell some of its outlets, according to media reports.
One of the promoters of the Jhoots chain, Sarbjit Singh Jhooty, has told The Pharmaceutical Journal that he is selling and remortgaging his pharmacy stores to clear the wages backlog.
Pharmacists' Defence Association had earlier claimed that locum pharmacists who have worked at Jhoots Pharmacies run by Sarbjit Jhooty are awaiting £670,000 in unpaid fees.
Last week, Social Care minister Stephen Kinnock told the House of Commons that Jhoots' services were below the mark and its services to the NHS could be struck off.
Kinnock had said that it is "completely and utterly unacceptable" if Jhoots was not paying its staff.
The minister said both the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) and NHS integrated care boards were taking regulatory action against individual pharmacies, which could be struck off.
Conservative Party member Simon Hoare on Wednesday (22) raised the issue during the prime minister's questions.
He alleged, "While His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is being told by Jhoots that staff are being paid, they are not."
Hoare described Jhoots Pharmacy as "de facto bankrupt and possibly even insolvent too".
In response, prime minister Keir Starmer termed the issue as serious and said, "It is simply unacceptable that customers and staff have been so badly let down."
He said he will be meeting the relevant minister in this regard.
Starmer pointed out that officials are currently reviewing whether the integrated care boards and GPhC need additional powers to address pharmacy businesses that do not play by the rules.
That could include powers for the council to go after business owners in addition to the pharmacy professionals. "More detail will be provided when the member meets with the minister, but I thought it helpful to give those two indications."
Earlier, the Labour MP Sadik Al-Hassan had approached the NHS Counter Fraud Authority to investigate allegations Jhoots pharmacies submitted dispensing payment claims for medicines that were not dispensed.
Labour cabinet minister Heidi Alexander had last month raised serious concerns around the chain’s long history of poor performance.
Labour cabinet minister Heidi Alexander and Ian Roome, a Liberal Democrat MP from North Devon, have also raised serious concerns about the pharmacy chain’s poor performance.
Funds shortage
However, some in the industry pointed out on social media that the crisis in Jhoots Pharmacy was an issue of pharmacies being starved of funds, rather than a lack of regulations.
NPA chair Olivier Picard said in a LinkedIn post, "This may be an individual case, but it reflects a worrying trend across the community pharmacy sector.
"While no one wants to see for more regulation, it’s clear that when a profession receives only around 58 percent of the funding it needs to operate safely and sustainably (as established by the NHS’ own independent economic analysis of the sector last year) situations like these become far more likely.
Ian Strachan, the owner of Strachan’s Pharmacy Group said in a LinkedIn post wanted the government to "challenge the experts, the civil servants whose policy ambitions are to see more pharmacies go into administration and less reliance upon the sector.
"It isn’t an issue of stiffer regulation or sanctions. It’s funding driving this buildup of debt. The government's own economic analysis from frontier economics not only predicted this misery but also maps out precisely how the widening deficit year on year will impact pharmacies and patients alike. The consequences are inevitable unless the warnings are addressed."
