NHS: Rural General Practitioner Dispensing Debate
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Baroness Brinton
Main Page: Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Brinton's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
NHS: Rural General Practitioner Dispensing
Baroness Brinton Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Earl Howe
My Lords, I do not think that it is a question of opposing choice against the rules that we have in place. The rules are there as a result of very long-standing agreements between the medical profession and the pharmacists. I do not think that there is an appetite on either side to open those rules up for renegotiation. A balance has to be struck somewhere and the professions are content with the balance that has been struck.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, given that half of patients who use dispensing GP services include at least one person over 65 and that one in six is a disabled person, can the Minister tell us whether the one-mile rule makes sense in very rural areas, where public transport may be very sketchy, especially as the one-mile rule is as the crow flies, not via the roads?