Pharmacy closures ALERT

[Serial_Apologist]

inews today: https://inews.co.uk/news/patients-fa...s-warn-2364395

[Serial_Apologist]

Not having visited Bell Green - which usually I only do to buy garments - I hadn't realised. My concern is that a squeeze appears to be being exercised on pharmacies from two directions: one, a government impending requirement to take up diagnostic and treatment prescribing transferred from over-strained, understaffed NHS surgeries for which they are not qualified and certainly not salaried; and two, problems for themselves in staff recruitment and retention, which I know well from my own, up to recently, always helpful and welcoming pharmacy. These are businesses, dependent unlike the NHS on making profits.

It transpires that all Sainsburys branches have now closed down their Lloyds Pharmacy counters. A visit just now to the medium-sized local branch made that clear when I was advised by a staff member that no one was or would be on site to offer advice on on-shelf products, but at least - she added - I could now include such items alongside other merchandise for payment at the check-out. Off topically speaking, they had used the removal as a pretext for a major shop re-organisation, resulting in shoppers wandering about like lost souls on the Victoria Line asking under-briefed staff where everything now was... added to which the ever-awkward self-service compound has been effectively tripled in length, with just two old-style check-outs remaining.

[alywin]

As I suspected. But it was always a pain having to queue up for something which would previously have been out on the shelves anyway (and for which I would have been happy to receive the Nectar points, as it was quite expensive). I didn't realise that any other branches in the vicinity actually *had* pharmacies apart from BG.