LONDON, ENGLAND – APRIL 28: Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, Jonathan Van-Tam speaks during a virtual press conference inside the new Downing Street Briefing Room in London on April 28, 2021 in London, England. (Photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth – WPA pool/Getty Images) Credit: GettyJONATHAN Van-Tam blasted NHS waste as he revealed his local hospital offered to pay a taxi £70 to deliver a 50p prescription.
The former Covid chief told a conference in Manchester that the health service squanders money on simple problems.
He said a hospital pharmacy recently told him he would have to come back later to pick up a as one of the pills was out of stock.
Professor Van-Tam, who served as England’s deputy chief medical officer in the pandemic, said: “That would have involved a 60-mile round trip to pick up one tablet so I declined.
“Instead, the hospital offered to send the tablet in a taxi and the cost of that taxi would have been around £60 or maybe £70.
“I knew that the cost of that tablet was at worst 90p or at best 50p.
“This was a heap of money that they were going to throw at the problem in the most inefficient way.
“The one thing that drives you mad more than paying lots of is paying lots of tax and knowing that it is being wasted.”
Prof Van-Tam said he got the pill from his local GP instead but warned most patients would accept whatever the NHS offered them.
The government has tried for years to cut down on cash .
Ex Health Secretary Wes Streeting last year accused the of being “addicted to overspending”.
Reacting to JVT’s story, former health minister Lord James Bethell said: “Patients and voters hate carelessness.
“In their own lives they would never tolerate such mad arrangements and they can see that the system is broken and they’re suffering.”
Prof Van-Tam added: “Had the pharmacy data sets been linked up in a much more intelligent, maybe assisted way, I could have been directed somewhere else to pick that up rather than having to solve the problem myself.
“Most people will take the solution that’s offered which would have been very costly for the system.”
Henry Gregg, chief of the National Pharmacy Association said: “We’ve long called for better information sharing between hospitals and community pharmacies.
“As Prof Van Tam’s experience also shows, are an everyday occurrence and force patients from pillar to post to get the treatment they need.
“Pharmacies spend hours hunting stock and we remain concerned that medicine shortages cause patient safety issues.”
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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