To think GPs shouldn’t charge for these letters?

[Lostare]

Flying soon (cheap flights and staying with family). I take injectable medication bi-weekly an autoimmune condition. I will be due to take this when I’m away.
I asked my GP for a letter confirming it’s prescribed medication so I can take it through the airport and they’ve requested £55 to give me this.
AIBU to think this is a ridiculous amount? I’m now stuck between not paying it and leaving my medicine at home, risking my condition flaring up, vs paying it and losing half my budget for my holiday!
is this a usual amount?

GPS are businesses holding a contract to the NHS to see patients. They need to make a profit to run said business. Providing a letter is an extra, that’s the going cost now

The issue is that there is no need for a letter. The prescription details are on the dispensing labels. The airline should not stop you bringing prescribed medication on the plane. If they are insisting on letters then it is an entirely manufactured problem. They provide details of what you can’t bring in luggage as a condition of travel and it doesn’t include medication. They are entirely linked to airline safety.

Customs and security officials will be looking for things like illegal drugs. They aren’t looking for personal medication for a 2 week trip with a dispensing label on it.

This is why the NHS isn’t put a requirement to produce these letters into the GP contract. It is a redundant use of their expensive time. The organisations and people asking for this are creating a problem that doesn’t need government or NHS intervention.

That is an actual change though which requires generation of new documents and validation for fraud etc - there is some actual work to do (although £19 is over egging it unless they still have a manual check). Downloading a copy of your documents etc presumably has no charge?

In this case all that is required is generation of a form letter taking existing information from the patient record. It could be done via the NHS/health record apps just as generating a bank statement is done via banking apps with no work for anyone in the surgery.

You’re asking the GP to write a letter for you about a medication that they aren’t even involved in prescribing to you. Frankly I’m amazed they even agreed to do it at all!

The cost of this should fall to the airline if they won’t accept a clinic or pharmacy letter. It’s not the job of the NHS to supply additional reassurance to private businesses like airlines, so you aren’t “already paying for it”. It’s not a health need. The airline is the one putting you out of pocket, not the GP.

The surgery does not have the information because the medication is prescribed and dispensed by the hospital team via a private pharmacy company. That’s why the letter is so expensive.

The OP is receiving the medication directly from the hospital and those labels don’t contain all the required info (I’ve had this experience myself).

Most of the airline requirements are set by the receiving country, especially where a medication used here is restricted in the country you visit. I’m quite sure airlines are over cautious on this - but their business requires careful compliance.

The real point is that NHS staff are spending ludicrous amounts of time and cost generating totally standardised copies of existing information across a range of requirements. If they modernised then it wouldn’t matter if an airline or another country was overly zealous because the OP could download a headed letter just as she can for a bank statement. Its the same mentality which operates 30 year out of date appointment systems and lack of inter trust/department/practice communication. Its a massive time waster for staff and patients.

Its information online in the patient records. Again - self service for standard requests from records has been around in the rest of the world for 30 odd years.

You are projecting here. The OP asked about the charge specifically.

I think a lot of people don't realise that the NHS, Doctors , hospitals and pharmacies work differently in different areas. They are not joined up, nor do they all use the same computer systems.
It's not just a juggernaut, it's hundreds of them.

I take similar injections for Crohn’s and have been travelling by air with them for years and never once taken a letter from my GP. You can print off a list of medications from your medical records on the NHS app. Similar for EpiPens - we always take them too and no one’s ever asked for a letter

Just forge a letter. It's not difficult.

YABU

This is not an NHS service- the contract with the GP surgery does not cover the cost of letters such as these, so it becomes a private service and you have to pay for that.

GP’s are not obliged to provide these letters at all because they are not obliged to provided private services at all.

Would you work for free? Do you think resources provided for NHS work should be spent on private work? It might only be one short letter for you, but there are so many of these sorts of requests coming in every week that it would soon add up when you consider admin costs/time etc.

£55 is relatively low cost when compared to how much a comparable professional letter would cost (my solicitor recently charged me significantly more than that for a brief letter).

If you want your GP to do private work for you, you’ll have to pay the going rate or take the risk of not having the letter you want.

If the problem is the GP’s time, perhaps the answer is that it shouldn’t need to be a doctor who does it. The letter isn’t saying that the medication is appropriately prescribed. It’s just saying that on x date your medical records showed that y medication had been prescribed for you until z date. That’s a clerical confirmation, not a medical one.

I'm now feeling very grateful to have a (wonderful) GP who charges £10 per letter. I have always been happy to pay the fee, but I'll be even happier to pay it in the future knowing now what some GPs charge!

There is no need for a letter. Nobody should be asking for the letter. The information should be on the dispensing label. This is an example of an old tech solution being safer and more reliable than a letter download from a protected database. The label stays with the medication which should stay with the person. It says who prescribed it and to whom and what the medicine is.

There is no safety or security issue for the airline or travel destination in an individual carrying small amounts of personal medication. This is a complete non issue requiring no solution.

The NHS has a summary care record which can be accessed by a defined list of organisations legitimately involved in patient care. That’s not airlines. Because they don’t need the information.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

😄 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.