It’s a complicated story, but the Veterinary Poisons Information Service is one of a number of services run by the Guy’s & St Thomas' Poisons Unit (GTPU), which exists primarily to provide 24 hour telephone poisons information to the NHS.

Until 2 years ago, this was largely funded through a contract by the Health Protection Agency (HPA). However, in 2005, the HPA decided that the service would be more cost-effectively delivered by rotating enquiries between four National Poisons Information Service centres based in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Birmingham and Cardiff. GTPU and the HPA disagreed about how this new model should work and as a result the HPA contract was withdrawn.

Since then, the GTPU has been operating at a significant loss, a position which the Trust believes is unsustainable, and which has led to this consultation.

The consultation paper lays out four possible options for the future. The first is to continue to run the GTPU under the current arrangements, and try to increase revenue from additional contract work. However, this would leave the GTPU in an uncertain position, which it fears would lead to staffing problems and a degradation in service.

The second option is to re-negotiate a contract with the Health Protection Agency. However, this alone will not provide the solution, primarily because with the four centre model now in place, there is arguably no need for GTPU to provide a 24/365 service. More likely, the GTPU would become the fifth rotating regional centre, which make it difficult to provide a 24/365 service to the veterinary profession. In this case GTPU would look at other ways of generating the revenue to continue the VPIS service.

The third option is to merge with another service provided by Guy’s and St Thomas: the Regional Medicines Information Service. There are overlaps in terms of the service they provide and it is expected that this option would lead to cost savings, though probably not enough to provide the single solution to the existing problems.

Finally, the option that requires no explanation: closure.

In all of this, there is seems to have been little discussion about the degree to which VPIS has contributed to the losses suffered by the GTPU over the last couple of years.

However, Jon Findlay, Director of the Trust said today: “None of the individual services we provide, VPIS included, break even financially.”

Although making the VPIS self-sustaining would not guarantee the survival of the service, it would certainly seem to make it more likely. There are a number of ways that this might be achieved, which VetSurgeon.org invites you to discuss in the forum section. You may also add messages of support for the service here, which will be included in the forthcoming consultation.