CALLINGTON Town Council is in the process of arranging meetings with the Tamar Valley Health Centre and Lloyds pharmacy over service concerns.

This comes after reports from local residents suggest that prescriptions are getting lost by the health centre and there is a general breakdown of communication between the health centre and its nominated pharmacy Lloyds.

The concerns about the health centre were brought up by Councillor Mike Moore at a recent Callington Town Council meeting. Cllr Moore said: ‘One resident had had their prescription lost four times by the health centre’ and added ‘other residents of Callington who were in Lloyds pharmacy at the same time stated to me that they had also experienced the loss of their prescriptions by the health centre.

‘There seems to be a degree of breakdown of communication between the health centre and Lloyds pharmacy and a lot of people are having multiple prescriptions lost.

‘A lot of residents in the town are also very unhappy with the standard of service from our local pharmacy. Nothing has improved. If anything it’s probably got worse.’

Staffing issues due to the national shortage of pharmacists has impacted Lloyds in Callington and other branches, with closures necessary, sometimes at short notice, causing frustration in the community.

Mark Stone, pharmacist partner at the Tamar Valley Health practice explained how this could be the result of people dropping in bits of paper containing prescription requests that could be easily mislaid.

He said in other cases prescriptions were not ‘lost’ but somewhere on the online system. He encouraged individuals to order electronically if they could as the prescription could be tracked.

The Electronic Prescription Service sends electronic prescriptions from GP practices to a nominated pharmacy.

‘There is a full audit trail we can use to find the prescription and if anyone wants us to investigate this we will support them,’ said Mark.

‘It is safer, better and more accurate way to order through the NHS app or online.

‘Let’s be green, let’s be more accurate and more productive.

‘We are keen about meeting the needs of our patients and we do that with good success.’

Councillor Andrew Long said: ‘We need to get the facts first.

‘I would urge anybody who has found that their prescription has been lost need to contact the health centre urgently and let them know.’

Callington portreeve, Mike Tagg said: ‘Invitations have been sent to both the pharmacy and the health centre for an informal non-confrontational chat to see how we can work together and help one another.’

Also mentioned at the meeting was a proposal to approach Tesco to discuss the possibility of having a pharmacy in-store.

Some concerns were brought up by councillors following this proposal as Lloyds brings people into the town and one of the conditions for Tesco coming to Callington was that the store would not have a pharmacy, however the overall concensus was that the priority was people’s health.

Cllr Tagg confirmed that since the meeting was held, the local manager of Callington’s Tesco branch had been approached, but only informally at this stage.