Medication Reviews
Sometimes you might see a note on your repeat prescription slip telling you that you are due a medication review. This is an opportunity for a GP (or in some cases our practice nurse) to check that your medication is still the best treatment for your condition and that you have had the appropriate monitoring and health checks done for your condition. If you have been taking the same medication for many years and your condition is stable it may be possible to conduct your medication review as a telephone consultation.
Why did the doctor not issue my prescription?
Sometimes the GP will not issue a request for a prescription and will ask you to arrange a telephone or face-to-face consultation instead. Common reasons include:
- You have requested a medication that has never been given to you before by this surgery
- You have requested your repeat prescription too soon (the GP might be concerned that you are taking your tablets too often and that they are running out early)
- You have requested an item which is not usually given as a repeat prescription (such as antibiotics or steroid creams)
- You have not been seen by the GP or nurse for a while and you need to have routine monitoring and health checks before we can safely issue your prescription
- You gave us a handwritten prescription from a hospital which you were supposed to take to the hospital pharmacy
Hospital Prescriptions
You should not bring us prescriptions issued by hospital outpatient clinics. It is often not possible for us to issue these prescriptions without the accompanying clinic letter which the hospital may not send to us until a few weeks later. Please take these prescriptions to the hospital pharmacy as you should have been advised at the hospital.
Shared Care Protocol
We prescribe certain medications on what is known as a "shared-care protocol" (examples include Methotrexate, Azathioprine, Ciclosporin). The patient remains under the care of the hospital specialist but the prescription is issued by the GP. Some drugs issued under shared-care require regular monitoring of blood tests to ensure their safety. If the patient is having their blood test monitoring done at the hospital, the GPs at Hamstreet Surgery reserve the right not to issue the prescription until they have up to date copies of the blood test results. It is the patient’s responsibility to make sure that we are receiving copies of their blood results.
Prescribing Policy
The GPs at Hamstreet Surgery believe that providing the best possible care to our patients is our top priority. When a prescription is necessary our main considerations are effectiveness and safety. We would never let cost come before patient care but at the same time we try to provide the best value to the NHS by prescribing from an approved list of medications which meet these considerations.
This list is known as a formulary and we are sometimes asked by a hospital doctor to prescribe medications which are either restricted to the local hospital formulary or are not on either the local hospital or GP formulary. It is not always possible to prescribe these medications but when these situations arise, we will seek advice from the Ashford Medicines Management Team in order to find a solution for our patients.