Contract signed 'under duress'

Dunedin pharmacist Don Anderson says he has signed a contract with the Otago District Health Board, but did so under duress.

The duress allegation has been denied by the board, which says he has not provided sufficient grounds " in fact or in law" to establish any claims of duress.

Earlier this year, Mr Anderson publicly advised he wanted to continue charging his customers an across-the-board fee to cover extra services, something expressly forbidden in the new pharmacy services agreement.

He now plans to bill the board at the end of each month for those extra services which he has provided, but for which patients have been unwilling or unable to pay .

After two days he had three items on the list, totalling $17.60, where people were unable to pay for legitimate extra work he had to undertake on prescriptions.

Under the contract, if a pharmacist has to charge for an extra service, such as the time taken to correct a prescription, the charge is to be made to the patient concerned. (Pharmacists are paid a standard dispensing fee of $5.30 which did not increase in the new agreement.)

Mr Anderson argued it was fairer to have a small charge across the board as he had done for about three years, because in some instances legitimate extra charges for extra services, could be as high as $170.

He was expecting many more arguments with patients now he could no longer make a blanket charge and had to ask individual patients for payment for extra services provided in the processing of their prescriptions.

He also considered that not being allowed to charge a small blanket fee meant he was not able to comply with his professional code of ethics which required him to be doing the best for his customers. His attempt to get the board to agree to a contract variation allowing him to administer a blanket charge, for which he said he had considerable public support, faltered.

The only reason the board could proffer for this was the need for national consistency and that the terms of the agreement had been agreed nationally in discussions between District Health Boards New Zealand and the New Zealand Pharmacy Guild, he said.