The cost of picking my brain

From time to time, we get phone calls from various people asking for advice.  After all, providing information about drugs is one of a pharmacist's key roles.  But now the pharmacists in our department have been asked to respect the divisions in the New NHS, and consider whether we should charge outsiders for picking our brains.

This has been prompted by one of the local GP surgeries taking their stable patients out of our warfarin clinic and managing them in-house, with the consequence that the PCT is giving us slightly less money to run that service.  The fear is that if one of these stable patients becomes less stable, we might be asked for a small gratis contribution to their care (such as a 2 minute phone call to check drug interactions).

On one side this makes us unhappy.  We are eager that patients receive the best care and the benefit of our abilities regardless of whether they've gone to the GP or gone to A&E.  On the other, we rely on the PCT funding us for the work we do; otherwise we'd lose our jobs.   

I'm going to ignore the possibility of charging a local hospital for the 15 minute chat about Defined Daily Doses I had today with one of their antibiotic pharmacists - even if there was no other reason, we have a synergistic relationship which can't be quantified - but I'm afraid this may be the way of the future.

23-1-9