The HSJ writes
"Drugs controversially sold onto the export market by Royal Surrey
County Hospital Foundation Trust included cancer drugs now listed as in
short supply to the NHS, HSJ can reveal."
I asked our prescribing advice people to tell me not about Trusts being
forbidden to trade, but about the foundation of opinion that this was
not illegal under EEC rules and treaties. I think describing them as
non-plussed would be generous, but they are going to consider it and
perhaps reply.
There does seem to be an intellectual failure somewhere, if the Trusts
are free to behave as businesses, and encouraged in public to do so and
their CEOs paid in some cases more than the prime minister to do so, and
yet there is to be a secret instruction they are not to.
I don't have a solution, but I don't like people faffing about - have a
market and live with it, or have a command economy and live with that,
and do it in public, not pass out messages of possibly illegal
instructions solving problems caused by bodging in the first place and
then hope everyone will accept that you can mark them as private.
Does your PCT send its own adaptations of national guidance and news out
without signature or attribution, and with a demand that it be treated
as restricted/confidential/secret?
Does it appear sensible and legal?
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A
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