Pharmacy2U has carpet-bombed homes in the area with adverts for its service. The adverts extol the benefits of this national company, but don’t balance this with the potential effects on your local NHS services. Your Patient Participation Group (PPG) has asked us to set the record straight.

• Pharmacy2U is not a replacement for current Cooperative Pharmacy or Spilsby Surgery dispensing or home delivery services. Both need to survive and to thrive.
• The High Street Lincolnshire Cooperative Pharmacy invests profits in your community. Dispensing GPs reinvest income in our patients’ NHS care. If these services aren’t used, it will damage your community and your NHS care from both the Cooperative Pharmacy and ourselves.
• There are some daft NHS rules about who can receive medicines from a GP practice dispensary. One is that if you switch to an outside pharmacy, the NHS doesn’t allow us to dispense to you again – even if you are in surgery sick on a Friday night. We don’t like it, and you won’t appreciate the trip into Skegness on a dark winter’s night for urgent medicines.
• Spilsby Surgery is required to display its Care Quality Commission rating. We’ve provided a link to Pharmacy2U’s own CQC inspection report here.
Its easy to register with Pharmacy2U. Its easy to unintentionally undermine the small providers of NHS care in your community.

September 2018