The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has urged community pharmacy teams to continue to report issues around obtaining stock due to drug quota allocations and contingency arrangements applied by wholesalers or manufacturers.
Since the launch of the quota issues reporting form, the PSNC has received over 230 contractor reports covering over 60 drugs reported to be affected by manufacturer or wholesaler-led quota restrictions, the pharmacy negotiator has said.
Initial observations of the PSNC have found that the problems with prescription validation processes where nearly half of respondents were unsuccessful in obtaining stock despite carrying out wholesaler or manufacturer-led prescription validation.
“Particular challenges with reduced wholesaler arrangement (RWA) distribution models – particularly for those contractors who do not use any of the nominated wholesaler(s) as their first line wholesaler,” the PSNC said.
The pharmacy teams have been spending significant time navigating through wholesaler or manufacturer-led quota allocation processes to obtain individual products.
This means that a nearly a third of contractors reported spending more than two days sourcing a drug due to quota issues, the PSNC has pointed out.
The PSNC has used these findings as evidence to support further investigation into both individual and wider supply issues created by drug quota allocation processes.
“We will continue to work closely with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Healthcare Distribution Association (HDA), Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and relevant manufacturer(s) to help resolve on-going quota issues and seek improvements to existing quota allocation processes,” the PSNC added.
