Surgery altered prescription

[Libby3781]

I phoned my surgery mid week to reorder my prescription.
Ordering more insulin......a few months back it was decided I needed 10 insulin pens per prescription, for both insulin’s I am prescribed.

However, my hubby went to collect my prescription today and I have only been given 5 pens of each. I am absolutely fuming as somehow the prescription has been changed without explanation. My apologies for the rant but I’m so annoyed.

So obviously, on Monday I will be ringing them to see what’s going on.

Has this ever happened to group members before & were you provided with an explanation???

Thanks all in advance for replies.

I am having serious concerns about my surgery as last week my hubby got sent a prescription that had nothing to do with him.

 

[DCUKMod]

I phoned my surgery mid week to reorder my prescription.
Ordering more insulin......a few months back it was decided I needed 10 insulin pens per prescription, for both insulin’s I am prescribed.

However, my hubby went to collect my prescription today and I have only been given 5 pens of each. I am absolutely fuming as somehow the prescription has been changed without explanation. My apologies for the rant but I’m so annoyed.

So obviously, on Monday I will be ringing them to see what’s going on.

Has this ever happened to group members before & were you provided with an explanation???

Thanks all in advance for replies.

I am having serious concerns about my surgery as last week my hubby got sent a prescription that had nothing to do with him.

On the upside, at least you should be have enough insulin to tide you over until it is resolved.

Do you order your meds online? My online ordering page (only one thing on GP prescription, so I have no experience of multiple items). I order what I want, then, for example, when going away for a few months, I just ask in the notes area for enough to carry me through.

I'd be horrified about what happened for your husband. Even more so if the script had his name on it?

I hope you get it sorted soon.

 

[Libby3781]

Yes, that’s very true. I’ve got some rather than none.

I would normally apply online, but my account has been deactivated & they haven’t reinstated yet. Even tho, I’ve been trying to get everything reset with them.

Since the start of the pandemic they have purposely switched off there online prescription ordering system. So now you have to telephone the order through to them.

The script hubby received did have his name on it. When he phoned them to advise what had happened they couldn’t even provide an explanation. They did advise they would investigate, I find it rather worrying that more errors could be being produced with regards to prescription

I appreciate times are hard under the current circumstances, but these mistakes are worrying and hopefully avoidable in the future

 

[Rokaab]

Since the start of the pandemic they have purposely switched off there online prescription ordering system. So now you have to telephone the order through to them.

Why on earth would they do that lol, would mean even more people would be ringing up!

PS. I realise you cant answer that

 

[Libby3781]

Why on earth would they do that lol, would mean even more people would be ringing up!

PS. I realise you cant answer that

Yes, it makes no sense whatsoever. Making more work for themselves unnecessarily. You’d think based on the current situation anything they can do to take the pressure off would be done.
I personally would always prefer the online option.

 

[MrsA2]

I had similar. I have eye drops that need a new bottle every month and I used to get 3 at a time, but then suddenly it was changed to just 1 at a time. Apparently there are now national guidelines that doctors can't prescribe more than 28 days supply at one time.
I contacted my consultant who originally prescribed them and he wrote to the surgery saying it was OK to give me 3 months at a time and it was changed back.
This was back in January/February time and I still live in trepidation that it will be changed back again.
Someone somewhere is thinking of costs, but this just trebles my gp's time, the pharmacists time and my time. I know my drops only cost £7 a bottle so its ludicrously expensive to do it only monthly

 

[DCUKMod]

Yes, it makes no sense whatsoever. Making more work for themselves unnecessarily. You’d think based on the current situation anything they can do to take the pressure off would be done.
I personally would always prefer the online option.

I wonder if it's something to do with how they have set their system up.

Our surgery has disabled the ability to make appointments, having gone over to a same day telephone triage system, with that either becoming a telephone consultation, or an appointment made for a future date, or another person, where necessary.

Our prescription element is still live, and in fact whilst they have always been pretty efficient with that, they have really got this to be a slick process now. I ordered my repeat (only a thyroid med) yesterday afternoon, and picked it up, dispensed today.

I would want to make a formal complaint about your husband's situation though. I would want it recorded in their complaints register (I assume they have one), and require a response, once their investigations are complete.

In my view, that can't be left as a "Whoooops", with the errant script shredded in the background, to become a "little secret".

Mistakes do happen. Nobody is perfect, but (and I am not asking what your husband expected or received), it could have had catastrophic effects if the person receiving said script wasn't very on the ball, or wasn't too used to what they were receiving.

[ shudder ]

 

[DCUKMod]

I had similar. I have eye drops that need a new bottle every month and I used to get 3 at a time, but then suddenly it was changed to just 1 at a time. Apparently there are now national guidelines that doctors can't prescribe more than 28 days supply at one time.
I contacted my consultant who originally prescribed them and he wrote to the surgery saying it was OK to give me 3 months at a time and it was changed back.
This was back in January/February time and I still live in trepidation that it will be changed back again.
Someone somewhere is thinking of costs, but this just trebles my gp's time, the pharmacists time and my time. I know my drops only cost £7 a bottle so its ludicrously expensive to do it only monthly

I have a consultant-only prescribed drug, which costs £9 per tablet. I take 2 a day and shortly will be increasing to 2.25 per day. I receive a hospital prescription, which must be dispensed by the hospital, for 6 months supply at a time. As the tablets are often short-ish dated, it can sometimes take a couple of trips to the hospital for my prescription to be fully dispensed.

I can understand why, if a person's medication changes a lot - whether the items, or doses, that dispensing modest amounts works, but my GP only dispenses 28 days at a time, unless one asks specifically otherwise, for a specific reason, like a long holiday.

There's a huge amount of inefficiency out there, in all walks of life.

 

[TeddyTottie]

It does seem odd, since if you pay for prescriptions you pay per item so it really doesn’t make any difference how many you collect at once. And most folk with ongoing prescription requirements either have the exemption certificate or the ‘season ticket’.

But I suppose there are those who have unused drugs kicking around after a batch issue. I know I have a whole box of metformin which I found the other day. I don’t take it any more (yay for LCHF/keto) so it will doubtless sit around til the date expires, ‘just in case’, and then get chucked. Multiply that scenario up by several hundreds of thousands of people and I suppose the costs of wasted drugs add up.

Irritating, though, to have to keep trotting back to pick up additional supplies.

 

[scorpius14]

i've been given same since the political issues (brexit) started to impact services back in 2018, and as we prepare for a worst case scenario I can only imagine first priority is to ensure people have enough supplies and medication. Thus my experience is my doctor is probably aware that due to my repeat prescription habits, they calculate I only use 1 box every 5 weeks so on average 1 pen a week (as well as other things like needles are also consistent with this timeframe), so this period between repeats is probably more convenient for them rather than order 3 boxes of pens at one time thereby limiting supplies for other people in these already difficult times.

 

[TriciaWs]

The NHS ordered GPs to only prescribe 28 days at a time, saving themselves money (apparently it was triggered due to 'too much wastage' before, supported by carefully placed news stories about a handful of people who'd died leaving bagfuls of unused drugs) but then costing GPs, pharmacists and patients more.
Any GP group that didn't implement the change got threatened with fines.
On the other side GPs were also instructed to provide online prescription ordering and appointments some time ago, my surgery scraped through by setting up online appointments that only ever had two or three a month, with their locums. Then Covid 10 allowed them to turn this off.