Question marks hang over pharmacy scheme roll-out

The money allotted to the Pharmacy of Your Choice scheme for next year is not enough for the popular medicine-distribution system to be extended to the whole island as the government promised last year.

The scheme has been rolled out to 27,694 patients but the government had last year aimed to have it extended across the islands by the end of 2008.

That target was missed after it hit a snag in August due to staff shortages but in May Parliamentary Secretary for Health Joe Cassar said the scheme would be extended to the whole of Malta and Gozo by next March.

Still, in the budget for 2009 the scheme was allocated €400,000 - down from this year's €466,000 - which would not even cover the present expenses that run into €580,000.

When questioned about this, a spokesman for the Health Ministry said the full allocation has been distributed "under recurrent and capital" expenses. She said the total sum allocated to the scheme is in fact €700,000, "far exceeding what is needed".

But, with €700,000 to spend on the scheme in 2009, the government will only be able to roll out the system to another 6,000 patients even though the take-up has the potential to increase to between 100,000 and 120,000 people who are entitled to free medicines.

The government pays pharmacies €20.96 a year for each patient that picks medicines from them.

When asked why the government had not allocated enough funds to the scheme in the first place, the ministry simply said that the scheme is a "pilot project" and therefore has not been allocated "a particular cost centre with full direct allocations".

Asked whether the scheme will be completely rolled out over the coming year, Dr Cassar said it was still premature to say.

Introduced earlier this year, the scheme is currently being evaluated by the authorities also in view of changes in the medicine entitlement law, Dr Cassar said. The evaluation had been established by the memorandum of understanding signed between the health authorities, the GRTU and the Chamber of Pharmacists.

"This was a pilot study and now we are looking into it," he said, adding that the scheme was "here to stay".

The roll-out of the scheme encountered problems in August due to staff shortages. Ray Xerri, the officer who was previously in charge of the scheme's planning and implementation, had said that the 28 staff members were not enough and another 17 were needed. Dr Xerri had long been pointing to the need for more staff.