NHS prescription charge

[MrTurtleLikesKisses]

I have had hyperthyroidism for 13 years. I picked up my prescription yesterday and paid the £8.60 prescription charge for my 30 tablets (annoyingly, if I had hypothyroidism, my medication would be free ).
Anyway, it suddenly struck me that £8.60 is a lot for a drug that I know has been around for a long time, so I looked online. Sure enough, it looks like it's available to buy, without a prescription, from abroad for a heck of a lot cheaper than £8.60 for 30.
So, have I been a mug all these years? Should I just buy it online? Or should I suck it up and pay the prescription charge like everyone else?

Seriously, they get paid ALOT for just dispensing the medication, regardless of the cost of the actual drug
Are you for real??

I think the current rate for dispensing an NHS prescription is 85p an item.

As for CDs, pharmacies get a little extra for dispensing the installments on a blue prescription but not much considering the effort.

It has been a while since I worked in a pharmacy.

TesticlesInABlender
Please can you clarify this??

Me too, I think we get £1.42 for CD scripts, hardly a fortune.
The government have just announced sweeping funding cuts for pharmacies, the GPHC estimate 3000 pharmacies will close.

Me too, I think we get £1.42 for CD scripts, hardly a fortune
Is that for a normal CD script or the blue instalment ones??

That's about right Persian - we now get a single activity fee of 113p, but we have lost other feedback and establishment payments are being phased out.

We have taken a 17% funding cut at our pharmacy in recent months - that's a member of staff lost and we were already working on minimum staff. I haven't had a pay rise in 6 years - it truly is crap at the moment.

Moral is low, but every day we put a smile on our faces and do our absolute best for our patients.

What is wrong with me - fees not feedback...

Thank you Persian and Testicles for the info. I didn't realise there was so much more at play here. I was given exactly the same tablets in exactly the same box. I can't check the box from the docs for the symbol as I no longer have one but it is identical. I think in my case the issue was the gp surgery issuing the prescription. Had I been given the opportunity to take an actual prescription slip into a pharmacy I'm sure it would have been brought to my attention much sooner. A bit off topic now though I see!
Again, thanks for clarifying the processes. It is interesting to see another viewpoint as I have only ever looked at this from my perspective as a 'customer'.

we now get a single activity fee of 113p
I always think that services like the CD blue prescriptions and the blister packs that pharmacies make up actually cost more in time than they are actually worth.

That is why I think that community pharmacies are so important because who else would offer vital services like these??

What is wrong with me
By the sounds of it overwork!!

I can't check the box from the docs for the symbol as I no longer have one but it is identical
Do you know what the name of the drug is??

We don't get paid for doing trays, it's a free service.
And our CCG won't pay us for supervised scripts either so me don't make any money on them, luckily we only have 4 trays and 5 service users so it's not too horrendous. I know a pharmacy near us has 75 daily blue scripts

We don't get paid for doing trays, it's a free service
They do take quite a lot of time to make up and some people wouldn't manage without them.

And our CCG won't pay us for supervised scripts either so me don't make any money on them
I think that is absolutely disgusting considering the amount of hassle that they can be.

Appalling, just appalling.

The problem is we have done things for free for too long - medicines trays and prescription deliveries are the top of the list. Not sure there is anything we do now...

Yes of course. It's ferrous fumerate, standard iron tabs that I've taken for years. The pharmacist honestly couldn't believe it!

It's ferrous fumerate, standard iron tabs that I've taken for years
Just checked, as you already know it is a P medicine so can be bought from a pharmacist.

www.medicines.org.uk/emc/medicine/27076

BNF lists net price of 84 210mg tablets @ £2.30.

I am not sure how much a pharmacy would charge you on top to buy them OTC but obviously it will be less than £8.60.

www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/bnf/current/9-nutrition-and-blood/91-anaemias-and-some-other-blood-disorders/911-iron-deficiency-anaemias/9111-oral-iron/ferrous-fumarate

If you ever need any other medicines in the future, it is now so easy to check these things out because the information is so easily available.

You would think that people working in pharmacies would tell you about things like this but sometimes they just take the prescription and prepare it without even asking if you pay until they give it to you.

I think that you were quite unlucky in that for all those years no-one once realised that you were paying a prescription charge for this item.

Anyway, at least you know now!!

As I explained before, my gp surgery dispense all prescriptions 'in house' so I had never been to a chemist until I was told to by the locum. The prescriptions are printed on reception and dispensed as you wait. You are just asked to sign and if you pay or not. I will check in future though

As I explained before, my gp surgery dispense all prescriptions 'in house' so I had never been to a chemist until I was told to by the locum
Sorry, it has been a long day I forgot that you said that earlier on.

I bet that you won't make that mistake again!!

Motherbear - you have a dispensing doctor. The rules are rather complicated and I don't fully understand them, but they are there to serve rural communities. I am not sure that they can leagally sell P medicines, but you should be able to buy them in a community pharmacy.

I am not sure that they can legally sell P medicines, but you should be able to buy them in a community pharmacy
Motherbear has been going to the pharmacy since she found out she could buy her medicines there.

TesticlesInTheBlender
Can I ask you something?

If a patient comes into your pharmacy with a prescription like MotherBear's and it is clear that she is going to pay the £8.60, would you tell her that she could buy them from you for a lower price even if she didn't ask you about it?

Please don't answer if I have overstepped the mark.

Yes I would - although the occasional one does slip through. Only about 4% of prescriptions are paid for where we are, so the numbers paid for are low and the number of those that would be cheaper even lower.

The majority of paid items tend to be antibiotics, ventolin inhalers and dental scripts. As we are now in hay fever season there are a number of antihistamine scripts.

Please, I worked in finance for the NHS looking at prescriptions submitted from pharmacies. For controlled drugs, pharmacies receive a comfortable amount for dispensing such things as methadone.

Anyway looking at the prescription cost and consider a lot of our population pay nothing (kids) and yes ALOT of the medication costs come under the prescription charge, bit a lot also come over it, by a long shot. It's a bargain

I was taking about blue scripts

Khajiit - and did you notice how many other script are dispensed at a loss?

Did you notice that for years the NHSBSA consistsntly underpaid pharmacies because they did not accurately price prescriptions?

Do you understand the additional workload involved in dispensing instalment scripts?

Do you understand the extra staff needed to ensure the pharmacy is safe?

Or did you sit in your office looking at your spreadsheet and make an assumption?

Yes I would - although the occasional one does slip through
I knew that you were going to say that you did.

I can imagine you as the kind of pharmacist that tries to do their best for the patients regardless of all the stress.

Blue scripts are much more time consuming than a regular script, they take at least 10-15 minutes each and they come with extra legal paperwork that needs to be done, some service users need extra supervision because they shoplift if you take your eye off them which takes staff away from other customers.
The mediocre extra payments are supposed to reflect this and compensate us for our time.

Wading in on the debate with an alternative perspective. My seretide inhaler would cost me £56 if I had to buy it privately. I'm so grateful that I only have to pay the £10 a month for my PPC, because I'd never be able to afford the drug that genuinely keeps me alive. Although prednisolone is less than a pound for 28. Conversely, the soluble ones they prescribe children are over £40 for 28. The NHS is one of the best things about this country, we must do all we can to protect it.