Just been charged £23 for doctor's note!

[fruitbowl]

Sorry if anyone's posted up about this before but I think it's outrageous!

My DD has just dveloped a moderate nut allergy and so the school has to have anti-histamine medicine in case she has a reaction. For this they need a doctor's note.

I've just been told the letter is readfy for me to collect and it will cost £23. They did tell me when I asked for it that there would be a charge for the secretaries time but I was thinking it would be more like a fiver.

Anyone else had to pay this much??

Thats terrible!

sounds alot- round here I think it's more like a tenner

but my GP always seems to find some reason not to charge us (bless him)

send the school the bill...

Ours is £12, but when I needed something similar for DD he let the charge go

Normal...in fact cheaper than here!

Hopefully the school will pay it for you.

Here it depends which doctor does it. Last one was 15quid but the one prior was only 5!

Sounds utterly unreasonable given that you have no choice - what else can you do but get the note.

We have never been charged for a doctors note although we did get a very sarcastically worded one (aimed at the authorities, not us) when about half of dd's class were on a tv programme and the whole lot needed notes for the council!

That is so wrong. If you were asking for a passport form to be filled in or a letter for other reasons, fair enough. However you need that letter for the school to ensure they can handle an emergency situation with correct meds. It is a medical need for your daughter. I would complain.

Why on earth should the school pay?
We are not allowed to give any medicine that hasn't been prescribed by a doctor - I just checked & we have had 62 requests for us to administer medicine so far this year (since September) - if we had to pay the parents £23 each time, in a full year that'd be about £2000.

Do the school need a doctors note? Is there any guidance that says that it is required? If there is then I think the parent would have a good arguement not to pay.

Thats normal here. A doctors note is £25.

tigger - yes there is guidance - the Department of Educations guidance 'Managing Medicines in Schools and Early Years Settings' says

"Schools and settings should only accept medicines that have been prescribed by a doctor, dentist, nurse prescriber or pharmacist prescriber."

So it's not the school being awkward, they are following the correct procedure.

But does it say they need a doctors note? Thats different from a prescription.

Well, at our school we would normally accept a medicine with a prescription label with the child's name on as 'having been prescribed', but if it's just a bottle of Piriton from the chemist (which is what one of our nut-allergy children has) then they would need a note from the doctor to say they need it.

I don't think the doctors round here charge anything like £23 though, or I'm sure I'd have heard the complaints...

So at your school then it would be OK for the parent to just ask the GP to prescribe the piriton?

Yes, that'd be fine. Normally of course you wouldn't want them to because I'd guess the prescription charge is probably more than a bottle of Piriton, but it would be less than £23!

But some doctors won't prescribe proprietary medicines anyway.