Emergency supplies to holiday makers?

[anit123]

Well! you have started off with a bang! Welcome to the forum. When you say 'others follow suit to not lose business', do you mean just give ES for free then?
That's not business that's the road to bankruptcy. Think it was Carnegie who said never make a charity of your business , or you won't have one.
johnep

Thank you for the welcome! I totally agree, why give away your stock for free?! But I still see pharmacies doing it on a regular basis because "that customer is our regular, we will get his script back". I guess the kindness they show to them translates back to "this customer will come back with his prescriptions and buy more from us if we bend the rules a bit for him". It really is a shame!

I WILL charge! Grrr

[johnep]

Lloyds SOP says all ES to be charged. says nothing about loans.
johnep

[sparkybw]

Asda gave my mother an emergency supply of five tablets when her prescription was delayed because of the surgery taking a week to deal with prescription requests. She'd been getting her prescriptions there for almost two years and the prescriptions were collected by the pharmacy. She was told that she would be refunded the full amount that she'd paid for the five tablets when she came to collect her prescription.

When she went to collect her prescription they wouldn't refund the money even though she had been give five fewer tablets in the prescription that they'd dispensed. So even though she is diabetic she had to pay for what was supposed to be a free prescription even though the delay was through no fault of her own. Prescription was ordered in good time, and it eventually took 10 days to get the repeat prescription from the surgery. Though as it now takes 12 days to even get a blood test why am I not surprised that they can't print and sign a prescription?

I used to work in this pharmacy and I was disgusted at the attitude of the staff. Especially as they lied to her about getting her money refunded. So I can see it from both sides really.

[johnep]

Presume you have a receipt.? You could complain to the PCT regarding the delay.
Also, if given 5 tablets short on an NHS script, then against the law. John Evans, how about this?
johnep

[sparkybw]

I think the five tablets short were the ones that she had already been given. So they counted those as being already dispensed. So it was an advance on her prescription. On both days it was a locum who made the call rather than the permanent pharmacist who would have approached it differently. She threw the receipt away thinking it was useless as they had refused her the refund.

I don't really blame Asda for it as they followed the rules for paying for the emergency supply. It's a grey area over whether they should have dispensed the full amount on the prescription seeing as they wouldn't refund for the emergency supply. Anyway it's water under the bridge now and I only used it as an example of when the patient may have followed all the 'rules' but still ended up without their medication and needing an emergency supply. I blame the surgery as it was the delay from them that caused the problem in the first place.

[johnep]

Regrettably, surgery delays are all too common. Even when the pharmacy is adjacent to the surgery and the surgery is open when the patient comes in, they still expect you loan to cover their inefficiency.
We really need some official rules on ES/Loans. EG no loans/ES when the surgery is open.
johnep

[Racer]

We had a patient who came back to us two months after we'd dispensed her prescription to say that we must have only given her two packs of levothyroxine rather than the three on the prescription. I checked the PMR and we'd dispensed three. She said that she always threw all the packaging away and kept her tablets in a paper bag(!),so I told her I thought she'd thrown a full pack away by mistake or somehow had lost a pack.She thought that was what had probably happened, but she wanted me to give her another pack to tide her over. I said that I wasn't prepared to do so and referred her back to the surgery.
The surgery said that she'd had three months worth and weren't prepared to issue another script. She came back to us to tell me what the surgery had said,(made me feel mean by not giving her a pack) and then said that she'd just skip taking her tablets for a month and walked out.

[anit123]

We had a patient who came back to us two months after we'd dispensed her prescription to say that we must have only given her two packs of levothyroxine rather than the three on the prescription. I checked the PMR and we'd dispensed three. She said that she always threw all the packaging away and kept her tablets in a paper bag(!),so I told her I thought she'd thrown a full pack away by mistake or somehow had lost a pack.She thought that was what had probably happened, but she wanted me to give her another pack to tide her over. I said that I wasn't prepared to do so and referred her back to the surgery.
The surgery said that she'd had three months worth and weren't prepared to issue another script. She came back to us to tell me what the surgery had said,(made me feel mean by not giving her a pack) and then said that she'd just skip taking her tablets for a month and walked out.

What an awkward position to be in! I think one of the key points here may be that the lady has dealt with a receptionist at that surgery who is bound by the rules that she has to work by. If I were her I would have perhaps tried to get an appointment to see a GP ASAP.

Does any one continuously experience surgery staff playing on the fact that we can do emergency supplies (or "loan tablets" as they like to put it)? I once had a receptionist call me (during morning surgery hours on a Saturday morning) to say that there is a gentleman who is taking long term flucloxacillin, and his script has not been signed by a doctor in time. She asked if I could "just lend a few to tie him over the weekend". I noted how sweetly she spoke with me. I looked at his record, I could see no evidence to suggest that his flucloxacillin was definately continuous as our records suggested he had a few breaks. For all I know the script may not have been signed because there was something wrong with his last blood test related to his use of fluclox, so I said he will need to get it signed or visit an out of hours GP, as I cannot do a "loan" or an emergency supply. I then noted the bitter tone in her voice. But behold 10 minutes later the gentleman presented with the prescription signed anyway! Cheeky stuff from that surgery, especially when that pharmacy is the most inundated pharmacy in the midlands for a Saturday!