Thanks everyone for all your comments and support (923 - brilliant you shared this on FB locally, there's quite a bit of that going up and down the nation which I am sure is helping get folk to think before jumping to conclusions that their local chemist is shyte. One stumbling block though is a lot of the older generation don't access social media - my Dad being one, so all of you good people on here please do take 5 mins to ask for patience and order their prescription a week before they need to start taking their medication).
923 - glad the surgery refused, means they are doing their job properly, pharmacies get bin-bags full of unwanted medicines returned to them and they cannot be re-used so 28-day prescribing is strongly advised within the NHS (with a few exceptions such as HRT and the contraceptive pill - both of which usually are manufactured in 3-month packs). If going away for an extended period then you can of course have arrangements made for you, as you managed to do through your pharmacy - we are here to help and by talking to your surgery should the need arise again you should be able to get sorted. Obviously in the current climate there is less time available to tend to such situations but then again not many folk are travelling abroad!
Leicesterbaggie - good thought, the seriousness of a condition is not well defined, take blood pressure in your case - it is a silent killer in that it tends to be symptomless. Going a few days without a statin isn't going to be a huge problem but then again if your arteries are well furred up you wouldn't want to be taking risks.
For all of you on repeat medication - (Mick this would help you) - there is a system called Repeat Dispensing (RD) where a batch of prescriptions for 6 or 12 months is sent to your pharmacy (either electronically or a paper version). The electronic system is clever enough to make the next month's prescription available to the pharmacy 21 days after the current one has been processed (which means the pharmacy has produced the white labels). Most pharmacies should be able to organise this work so that you collect on (not before) a specific date, suffice to say though that if a pharmacy is struggling due to perhaps staff sickness or job vacancies then they will fall behind on the work so if that's the case typically for you then phone a day or two before you're due to collect. Speak to your surgery about moving to RD.
Mick - obvs your choice to buy Nexium but you have paid into the system mate and are using it for your Amitriptyline so try to get these synced by your GP or surgery pharmacist.
Q - Phenobarbital is very rarely prescribed these days and I suspect is probably expensive so I can understand why they would not want to keep in stock. If other more routine items (message me if you don't want to share on here) are frequently needing to be ordered for you then generally that's a poor service. In my original post I referenced the 75%:25% split of repeat meds vs more acute situations and if a business operates on a label today, stock tomorrow model then in theory it only needs to keep stock for the 25% but run it too fine then you disappoint patients & make more work for yourself having to serve them again when they come back for owed items.
Q - on shortages in general, it's a complex situation and is a market driven. The Govt. in its funding model allows for a certain amount of purchasing profit and for each drug the number of suppliers tends to determine market pricing, it is highly competitive. Prices can get driven down to a point where suppliers exit the market to the point where only one is left and if they run into production problems then that's an out of stock situation. GP's then prescribe an alternative creating a spike in demand and production needs to catch up. In addition suppliers can manipulate the market by exporting to countries paying a higher price and a number of raw materials are sourced from China so any disruption at the ports will affect production. To be honest - the system has been plagued with shortages for years causing a colossal amount of work for pharmacies sourcing stock and for surgeries to change folk to a different drug.
Mick - a pharmacy supplying monthly instead of 2-monthly makes more money but as I said the taxpayer gets a cracking deal, it couldn't be done cheaper without introducing additional risks to patient safety. It's also far better to have it than have so much wastage - people still order even though they don't take medication because it's free and I think they are afraid they'll get into trouble with their GP. They are so misguided it's unbelievable, especially with the shortages issue!
Hope this helps and stay safe (whatever that means - just how does one stay safe?). Time for a beer now.
WCV
Reply With Quote