General Medical and Pharmaceutical Services (Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1996

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Regulations.)

These regulations further amend the Health and Personal Social Services (General Medical and Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1973 (“the principal regulations”), which regulate the terms on which general medical and pharmaceutical services are provided under the Health and Personal Social Services (Northern Ireland) Order 1972 (“the 1972 Order”).

The regulations amend the principal regulations to reflect the power of the Tribunal to suspend a chemist or to declare a chemist not fit to be engaged in any capacity in the provision of pharmaceutical services. The Terms of Service for chemists are amended to prevent the employment of pharmacists in relation to whom such a declaration is in force. The amendments also provide for payments to suspended chemists. (Regulations 2, 6 and 7).

Regulation 4 contains minor and drafting amendments which are consequential on the substantive amendments contained in regulation 8.

Regulation 11 requires chemists to set up and operate (in accordance with the regulations) a complaints procedure and to co-operate with any investigation of a complaint by a Board in accordance with its procedures. Regulation 11 also amends the Terms of Service for chemists by requiring a chemist to give, on request, an estimate of the time it will take before any drugs, medicines or appliances prescribed will be ready; and to require pharmacists to provide pharmaceutical services and exercise their professional judgment to a standard generally accepted in the pharmaceutical profession.

Regulation 8 amends doctors' terms of service in 2 ways. First, provision is made to enable a doctor to transfer part or all of his obligations under the terms of service to another doctor at night, at weekends and on public holidays. Such an arrangement can only be made with the approval of the Board. The regulations require a doctor to provide the Board with details of the proposed arrangement and they require the Board to have regard to the interests of the doctor’s patients as well as the practicability of the proposed arrangement in deciding whether to approve it. There is also provision for a doctor to appeal against the Board’s refusal to approve a proposed arrangement, for the Board to review any approval and, where necessary in the interests of the doctor’s patients, to withdraw its approval immediately.

Secondly, the terms of service are amended to require a doctor to establish and operate a system to deal with complaints. There is provision about who may complain, what they may complain about, how such complaints are to be dealt with and the publicity which a doctor must give to his complaints procedure. The terms of service changes also require a doctor to co-operate with complaints procedures which are operated by the Board.

The Terms of Service are also amended to include a definition of “notice” as “a notice in writing”.

Regulation 5 alters the status of the keeping of records by a chemist in connection with the supply of drugs from that of a supplemental service to that of an additional professional service.

Regulation 9 requires doctors to include details of any new out of hours arrangements in their practice leaflets.

Regulation 10 requires doctors to include the number of complaints received under the new procedures in the annual reports which they must submit to their Board.

The Drug Tariff, referred to in the insertion made by regulation 7 is available to chemists and Boards from the Central Services Agency, 25 Adelaide Street, Belfast BT2 8FH.

Paragraph 8E of Schedule 11 to the 1972 Order, one of the enabling provisions under which these regulations are made, is inserted by Article 4 of the Health and Personal Social Services (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 (“the 1995 Order”). The provisions of the 1995 Order which amend the 1972 Order in relation to pharmacists are brought into operation on 29th March 1996 by virtue of the Health and Personal Social Services (Amendment) (Commencement No. 2) Order (Northern Ireland) (S.R. 1996 No. 123 (C. 6)).