Welcome to Jonathan Mason's blog page, where Jonathan will be regularly posting video diary updates on his work as the Department of Health's community pharmacy tsar. If you have a question or suggested topic for Jonathan then you can email him by clicking here.

As the Department of Health's national clinical director for primary care and community pharmacy, Jonathan holds a key role in realising the promises outlined in the pharmacy white paper.

He is also head of prescribing at City and Hackney Teaching PCT, where he leads on prescribing and medicines management and has wider responsbilities for primary care commissioning. He took this position after working first as a prescribing support pharmacist and then as a prescribing adviser at Canterbury and Coastal PCT.

Prior to that, Jonathan has worked in hospital pharmacy, research, academia and regulation - not forgetting his time spent running a busy village pharmacy.

Dear Jonathan

Re: "Customer service"

I think you have chosen poor examples. Maybe a reason why no-one answered the phone is that, in common with many pharmacies, profits have been reduced so much by the Department of Health that staff levels have been reduced. It is really quite simple - staff are paid from the gross profit that the pharmacy makes, so less profit translates into less staff.

Secondly, slow moving or hard to get hold of medicines are less likely to be stocked when the risk of loss (out-of-date, spoilage etc) is not underwritten by sufficient profits to provide this necessary service to patients.

Thirdly, the quotas on purchasing branded medicines imposed by big pharmaceutical companies in order to keep their prices and profits high result in a lot of time being spent on sourcing regular products leaving less time for anything else.

I may have generalised but the principles are sound. Customer service is a resource that costs money just like electricity. If profits are down you economise where you can. If you want investment in staff, training, stock levels or anything else you must make provide the profit.

Regards,

Charles Caller

Jonathan responds