To think GPs shouldn’t charge for these letters?

I personally don’t think so. There’s more than “just a short letter” that goes into it in the background.

GPs are their for your health, not to facilitate your holidays (or anything else for that matter), so they’re fully entitled to charge for letters & anything else outside of the health remit. The entitlement shown by the Op is staggering.

Strangely the staff in a GP practice have got more important jobs to do than to help your holiday planning!

That's just your opinion. Other professionals charge much higher fees and they are entitled to do so. You should be grateful that you were not charged by the GP.

You could always request a copy of the letter from the hospital informing the GP of the prescription. That would be free (it is a Subject Access Request) and takes up to a month.

£55 for a short letter is crazy.

That's not exactly the impression you gave in your initial post is it! It was very decent of them not to charge you and GP certainly do show discretion if they know that patients are genuinely struggling, which you were.

I usually just take a copy of my prescription and my original letter from my consultant diagnosing me/saying I should use this medication.

I get that it’s annoying but the GPs and staff are already very strained and reviewing this/sorting out the letter will take time out of their day.

The letter was asking for debt forgiveness due to poverty arising from poor mental wellbeing due to domestic abuse. I said it's ironic to make me pay, please don't. I didn't have the money, ironically.

How entitled and cheap of you. Clearly, the GPs in your surgery are far nicer and more generous than you are.

I agree. Most people are completely oblivious to the cost of healthcare in the UK. Even private healthcare doesn’t truely reflect the cost as it uses the NHS as its safety backup for ICU. But if you do go private then a consultation generally works out over £200 per hour, often a lot more.

So a GP reading up your request, reading your notes to check the prescription (at which point they have acquired some responsibility for it and indemnity insurance would come into play and they would need to make a professional judgement about it especially if prescribed elsewhere), typing it up or having it typed up by a member of clerical staff they pay, posting it or contacting you to tell you to collect it, and raising an invoice, makes £55 seem cheap.

It’s an extra for the individual GP, not the NHS surgery. They can charge whatever they choose.

You are certainly not unreasonable.
But GPs are independent small businesses, contracted to provide certain services to the NHS. Writing this type of letter is not one of the contracted services so they can charge whatever they choose. As my father used to say if you want a doctor to do something, write the request on the back of a cheque.
Would a copy of your repeat prescription and the pharmacy label on the medication not suffice?

Hi OP who supplies your injections ?

when we fly with daughter she has quite a lot of injections and IV mediations. We always need to take a letter and it is supplied by bupa who deliver her medications for free. They will even deliver her supplies to the airport !!!!

😄 quite

People are surprised by the cost of a professionals time because the NHS is free at the point of delivery.

It's the same with solicitors. An experienced solicitor can charge £500 an hour excluding VAT. So for a short letter charged at one 6 minute unit is £50 + £10 VAT. £60 for short letter.

Not different to a GP.

Pleading poverty for a letter to shown an airline as you fly off on holiday?

Is it printed on gold leaf written in the blood of endangered chinchillas?

In this world you only get what you ask for. I have had letters and pleaded poverty and asked for them to be done free of charge. They were.

I think the cost is also a deterrent to patients. If they charged a nominal fee such as £5 or for free all their time would be taken up with this.

So you want the GP to do this for free in a slot where they could be seeing a patient so you can go on holiday.

I think the point is the GP haven’t prescribed these. If the patient has Patient Knows Best and they were prescribed by the hospital. It will be on the clinical letters which are downloaded on that app. I think this medication is not from the GP. Therefore having a letter from the GP will cost.

I have got and paid for the letters from the GP or taken copies of hospital letter or taken the medications in their original labelled packaging.

Probably fairly similar to some other professionals, although lawyers tend to charge far more.

That is similar, if not cheaper, than the cost to the NHS of a 10 minute GP face to face appointment.
I think it’s very reasonable.

Mine charges £80 for anything they don’t have to do…

Which still has to be paid for. If the clerical support to the GPs is taken up with this essentially private work then it has an impact on the whole surgery. The secretary doing this is taken away from the NHS work that the surgery is obligated to do under the NHS contract. That work still needs to be done.