An Isle of Wight NHS pharmacy owner has had to rely on life savings to keep his business afloat amid a national pharmacy crisis.
Owner of Regent Pharmacy, Gary Warner, has said he is the ‘189th busiest pharmacy’ in the county, despite making a loss of £179,000 this year.
The costs of running a pharmacy are now 40% higher than they were a decade ago, Gary said.
He has pointed to a wide range of factors that have made life more difficult for pharmacists – inflation relating to the COVID pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Brexit and the cost-of-living crisis. Another is the inability of pharmacies to raise prices in the same way as other businesses.
The NHS has not raised prices for community pharmacies in over 6 years, Gary said. He claimed that although the NHS prescription fee has risen, none of that money has gone to pharmacies. The NHS has instead been the beneficiary.
On top of this, he said he now has to pay an additional £1,000 to card merchants to take debit and credit cards due to pharmacies now being considered a high risk business.
The grim financial situation that Gary’s 2 branches in East Cowes and Shanklin found themselves in is mirrored across the country. England’s community pharmacies have been closing at a record rate of 10 a week this year, according to the National Pharmacy Association. The trade association believes English pharmacies are currently grappling with a £1.3billion a year shortfall.
On 19th September, Regent Pharmacy Shanklin and East Cowes will be turning off their lights on the eve of the Labour Party conference as part of a national day of action by pharmacies to raise awareness of the ‘dark times’ they are facing.
Gary said:
“My neighbour at Day Lewis Pharmacy was closed today because they couldn’t get a pharmacist to attend.
“I think that’s three times that’s happened in the last three weeks. Boots at the top of Regent Street seems to be closed every other Saturday.
“A pharmacy is often an anchor in a high street or parade of shops with the constant footfall providing a feed for other premises nearby – the high streets across the Island are in peril already so losing the pharmacy will potentially be the final nail in the coffin.
“We’ve lost the Sainsbury pharmacy because the owner has exited the market altogether and the lack of availability of pharmacies means that the NHS is paying one pharmacy on the Island to open until 8.30pm in the evenings; not one of the others could afford to have their teams stretched any further, with staff cuts having been the only non-fixed cost we have any control of as owners.
“85 per cent of us have been losing money for two years now, which means that it is costing us our own money to run an NHS service.”
It’s odd because over on CP they’re reporting that a pharmacy in Ryde is opening for longer hours, rather than closing as this article suggests is happening:
‘Gibbs and Gurnell Pharmacy in Ryde will now be open until 8.30pm on weekdays’
Maybe the answer is to be open when working people are off work, i.e. Saturdays and evenings?
Worrying. We’ve always had great service at the East Cowes branch and would hate to see it close.