Urgent Prescription Requests

Due to the increasing numbers of patients requesting their prescription on an urgent basis, the practice has needed to instate an Urgent Prescription Policy.

We are getting an increasing amount of requests for immediate prescriptions and want to re confirm our policy so that all our patients are aware of our processes.

Requests for prescriptions outside the normal prescription protocol impacts significantly on both doctors and administration staff time as well as increasing the risk of a medication prescribing error.

Unless a medication is clinically urgent, as per the list below, requests will be processed routinely (over 2 working days).

As a surgery, we require a minimum of 2 working days to process a patients request for medication routinely.

Please respect our staff

• Our reception and administrative staff are to always follow this policy and they are not authorised to make any exceptions.
• Staff are not allowed to interrupt the duty GP during surgery.
• This policy is put in place to protect our patients and our staff, and we will not tolerate any abuse to or of our staff as they are following policy.

Many medications can safely be missed for a few days.

• Urgent prescription requests are requests for emergency medication which are needed within 24 hours to prevent the patient from becoming seriously ill
• Urgent prescription requests are not requests for medication which have been ordered late as it is the patient’s responsibility to ensure that repeat prescription requests are ordered in time.
• This will ensure safe prescribing and optimise access to the clinical team.

If you forget to obtain a prescription for repeat medication and run out of important medicines, you may be able to get help from your Pharmacy.

• Under the Urgent Provision of Repeat Medication Service, Pharmacists may be able to supply you with a further cycle of a previously repeated medicine, without having to get a prescription from your GP.
• If you have run out of important medication, telephone your usual Pharmacy to check that they offer this service; if they don’t, they may either direct you to another Pharmacy who does provide it, or ask you to phone 111 where you can request details of a local Pharmacy that provides the service.

You must then take with you to the relevant Pharmacy, proof of both your identification and of your medication (for example, your repeat prescription list or the empty box which should have your details printed on it).

Exceptions:  Controlled drugs and antibiotics are not provided through this service, you will need to ring 111 for these if you are unable to wait the usual 2 working days.

Hospital Prescriptions

• When you are seen at the hospital and are given a hospital prescription, you should not leave the hospital without attending the hospital pharmacy to collect the medication.
• A hospital prescription is not valid in community pharmacies.
• Do not bring it to the surgery and ask us to convert to a practice prescription – some hospital medications are not licensed to be prescribed in general practice.

Private Prescriptions

Please do not bring these to the surgery to convert to NHS prescriptions. You will need to take to a local pharmacy and pay for the prescribed items directly to them.

Holiday Medication

• Holidays are normally booked weeks or months in advance, therefore when preparing for your holiday, please remember to process a request for your routine medication allowing the normal 2 working days for processing.
• We can only provide a maximum of 2 months medication and we may request a patient to provide documents to support this request.
• We are unable to provide emergency prescriptions for holiday medication.