Problems with proximity?

[DoctorB]

Google has failed with answering this question, perhaps those in the know may be able to help me!

A friend of mine (a vet) recently saw her GP with an infected cat bite and was prescribed a course of co-amoxiclav. She lives and works in a small town in a fairly rural area, and pharmacies are few and far between. She took her prescription to the closest pharmacy, some half mile from her house and slightly less from the GP surgery.

The pharmacist declined to fill her prescription, citing that the pharmacy was too close to either her home or her GP practice (she cannot recall which) and sent her away. She found this extremely bizarre, but had no choice but to visit a neighbouring town to get her prescription filled.

This whole incident seems quite unusual - as a patient I have picked up prescriptions from my GP and had them filled at the pharmacy over the road from it all within four hundred yards of my front door. As a doctor (albeit hospital based) I have never heard of any such regulations.

My question is this: are there any regulations of this sort, or was the pharmacist merely being contrary? I know that there are systems in place to allow objections to filling, for example, OCP prescriptions on religious grounds but I don't see how those could apply in this situation.

[LeftArm]

It sounds like the dispensing doctor regulations.

A Doctors surgery may dispense under the Dispensing Doctor rules if:
"A patient is resident in an area which is rural in character, known as a controlled locality, at a distance of more than one mile (1.6km) from a pharmacy’s premises (but excluding any distance-selling chemist premises). The pharmacy’s premises do not have to be in a controlled locality."

However this would only be a problem if the patient took the script to the Doctors Surgery Pharmacy and the patient lives within a mile of a retail pharmacy. They would not be able to fill it.
If they live within the controlled locality they can still take the script to another pharmacy. It would be a bitter and twisted pharmacist who would refuse the script in order to spite the surgery for having a dispensing contract.

[Pharmanaut]

Sounds weird.
Can't work out why either.
Any script handed to us that has no patient safety issues gets dispensed regardless of prescriber or patient origin.
Professional courtesy usually applies to our fellow healthcare workers - usually put in front.

[SolomonQ]

Call the pharmacy and ask for the exact reason why they couldn't dispense. Could be a case of some sort of local arrangement. E.g. pharmacy owned by prescribing doctors.

[Tony Schofield]

So how would that square with dispensing the prescription "with reasonable promptness"? Contractual obligations over ride private arrangements. Good idea to ask the pharmacist why and consider taking it further with the PCT or GPhC