Wellington March 6 NZPA - The New Zealand Pharmacy Guild is calling on Otago and Southland district health boards to withdraw a plea to general practitioners to show restraint when prescribing medicines in a bid to save cash.

The plea in a letter headed "Cost of Community Pharmaceuticals" said the boards were under "tremendous financial pressure".

They were spending an average $261.94 per patient on prescriptions, $7.24 above the national average.

This variance accounted for $2.071 million of the total spending on community medicines in the two provinces last financial year of almost $80 million.

The letter said that if the boards could not bring medicine spending into line with funding, there would be no alternative but to reduce some other much-needed service.

But Guild chief executive Annabel Young said the letter was "flying in the face" of part of last year's national agreement between boards and the guild.

She said community pharmacies had agreed to accept no increase in the $5.30 dispensing fee in the new agreement which came into effect this week.

One of the conditions for this was that boards would not intervene to lower forecast growth rates in the dispensing volumes during the term of the agreement, which expired in August next year.

Otago board chairman Errol Millar said he had received no feedback from GPs since the letter went out a week ago.

The board did not want doctors to cut corners to save money and the wording of the letter had been very careful, he said.