5 days to fill a prescription.

[spanieleyes22]

Is this really the norm now? So my story is dd came back from uni with horrible rash from neck to knees. I said she needed doc. Couldn't get appt so went to pharmacy . The pharmacist didn't know what it was and said see a doc asap. Finally got telephone appt on Tues. doc said it's viral. Said she would write a script for so steroid cream which should help. I couldn't get to the pharmacy on wed and dd managed with calamine and moisturizer. Pharmacy closes at 6. I should have picked one that stayed open late I wasn't thinking. So went at lunch today. Answer was it takes 5 days to prepare the prescription . They only got it from the doc this morn. So that would be next wed she told me to come back . I made a bit of a fuss and said the rash was all over her body and she needed it. Eventually she went and looked and told me it was out of stock anyway. Ended up she gave me the prescription and I have to drive round and find somewhere that has it. She said no boots will have it. Is that the norm now. That scripts take 2 days to travel from doc surgery to chemist then they take 5 days to prepare it. Seems terrible to me. I'm used to walking out the doc straight into the pharmacy and getting the medication but I'm from Dublin. Seems very different here?

I can submit a repeat on the app after tea on Friday and it'll be there on Tuesday.

You can't see a doctor for love or money locally though.

It’s normal if there’s a shortage of the medication, it’s much quicker if it’s there in the shelf.

I take adhd medication and there were shortages of it for about 6 months and, even when there was a small amount of stock, it had to be ordered in. As it’s a controlled drug the GP could only prescribe a few days in advance which made it tricky to fill a prescription before I ran out!

Most pharmacies will tell you their stock over the phone to save you having to drive round. I regularly called 15-20 pharmacies to find stock or stock of different mg so I could get an altered prescription.

We're told to allow two working days for prescriptions but in reality they are normally done the same day during the week, first thing next weekday at the latest. If I go to the pharmacist to collect it and it hasn't been made up they will do it straight away,

This

I work in a pharmacy, we do ask people to put requests in to the GP for repeat prescriptions at least a week before they run out just because some GPs are taking 2-3 days to process the requests before sending them to us; then sometimes we are running a day or two behind purely due to the sheer volume of prescriptions we receive. We receive about 200 electronic scripts a day plus walk ins, process upwards of 5k prescriptions and dispense over 10k items every month.

Add in the fact we are always understaffed and if a locum pharmacist calls in sick/doesn't turn up/turns up late or leaves early then we legally can't do anything if there is no pharmacist on site and we can easily end up behind and we may not process your prescription on the day we receive it. Then, once we do process it if it's not something we have on our shelves then we have a minimum of a 24hr turnaround to order it, receive it and dispense it ready to be collected, provided it isn't a weekend as suppliers only deliver Mon-Sat, so anything ordered on Sat will be delivered on Monday at the earliest.

Once you factor all of those things in it can easily be a week for a prescription to be processed, but if you walk in and ask about an electronic prescription we haven't yet got to then we will treat it like a printed prescription someone has just walked in with - we print it off, check we have the stock and tell you how long it will take (usually only about 10/15 mins but if we are slammed or the pharmacist is tied up with an emergency/complicated issue then we may ask for longer).

Even if we don't have the item on the shelf we will check our suppliers' websites and if it is in stock we will advise you how long it will take to be delivered (usually next day unless it's a special order item). If you're happy to wait we process the prescription there and then so that the item is ordered; if not - or it's out of stock with our supplier - then we will let you know and advise you the best other pharmacies to try for stock (We are in a supermarket so have set suppliers but there are a couple of independent pharmacies near by who have more flexibility with supply options; if it's after 5pm we will advise which other pharmacies are open as many local ones are only open M-F 9-5)

As a bare minimum, if someone came in, even if we were weeks behind with electronic prescriptions we would prioritise their prescription to get it done asap, not just tell them "I don't care how urgent it is, come back in 5 days"

I work in a surgery. It's not normal. Acute prescriptions done as soon as you finished talking to the clinician. You can walk into any pharmacy and show them the bar code on the nhs app and get it within about 30 mins depending on how busy the pharmacy is.

Thanks for clarifying @melj1213 and for everything you do. I know it's a really tough job.

@melj1213

Compared with how things work where I live (in Europe) what you've described is only one step in advance of the quill pen and carrier pigeon.

I have a repeat prescription for a long-term condition. My GP is allowed to pre-approve prescriptions for 3 months, so when I call for a repeat prescription the staff can process it immediately. After 3 months I need to speak to the GP (which the system flags up) but this can be a 5 minute phone consultation.

Once the surgery has approved and ordered the prescription, the data is live on my electronic record, which the pharmacist (any pharmacist anywhere in the country) can access using my electronic health card. This happens instantly.

At the pharmacy, I present my e-card to the assistant, who can see the prescription on screen and who calls up the medicine from the stock. The drugs are automatically picked from stock and transported to the front counter by an automated system, using bar-code technology, and the actual packet is also checked again by the assistant for accuracy (using the bar code) before being handed to me. From handing them the e-card to receiving the drugs takes no more than a minute or two, and the assistant takes any payment and discusses any issues while the drugs are being retrieved.

Having lived in several European countries, I can say that this is basically the same system that is used in many countries.

@RuthW helpfully confirms that there is an NHS barcode system in place in the UK, so technically this should also be feasible in the UK, but would require investment in technology andin the stock room and a change to working practices.

As for stock, one of my drugs is not particularly common so the first time I went to my local pharmacy they did not have it in stock. It was ordered and arrived the next morning. When I collected it I said that this is a drug that I will need every month, so it was added to their basic stock and is now always available.