2005-6 was published on the 21st of November, for England and Wales.
Dramatic rise in number of community pharmacies
Independent Pharmacies continue to decline
Dr Allan Tennant reports
7th of December 2006
There was a net increase in the number of community pharmacies in the last year of 139 to 10,580. From 1998 to 2005 there had been a fall of 62 pharmacies.
This is mainly due to the introduction of the four methods of bypassing the control of entry regulations.
The exemptions are:
Out of town shopping developments
100 hour pharmacies
One stop shops
Mail order and internet
There were 271 One Hundred Hour pharmacy applications and 156 (58%) were granted.
There were 69 Out of Town applications of which 51 (74%) were successful.
40 mail order or internet applications were made and 15 (45%) were successful.
The one sort of application that is likely to be unsuccessful is the One Stop Shop where only 1 out of 10 applications was granted.
Items dispensed by pharmacists grew by 5.4% to 713.5 million. In Wales growth rose by 5.6%. The mean number of items dispensed per month was 5,620 in England and 6,423 in Wales.
The net ingredient cost fell by 79p to £10.42, with the advent of Category M.
There are 20 pharmacies for each 100,000 of the population in England, so the average pharmacy provides services to 5,000 people. In Wales the provision is a pharmacy for each 4,166 of the population. The area with least provision is Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire with 16 pharmacies for 100,000 people.
The growth in ownership by multiples picked up this year, rising from 54% to 57% of all pharmacies (See growth below). In 1996 the multiples owned 39% of the market. 86% of the 252 pharmacies receiving payments under the Essential Small Pharmacy Scheme were independent.
The graph below shows percentage of pharmacies opening by distance to the nearest pharmacy. It would suggest that new pharmacies are opening closer to competitors. It may suggest clumping, particularly around doctor’s surgeries. One would expect rural applications to be further from another pharmacy. It would also suggest that this year’s record number of new pharmacies is mainly in urban areas.
The data on applications in controlled areas is not easy to interpret in terms of rurality or doctors applying to dispense, but there were 105 pharmacy applications in controlled areas of which 25% were granted. All 16 appeal decisions were dismissed although we do not know the details of the appeals. What we can conclude is that the appellant always looses.
Enhanced services most likely to be provided by a pharmacist were stop smoking, supervised medicines administration, minor ailments schemes and supply of medicines via patient group directive.
