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Letters to the Editor
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Emergency supplies
Is refund legal?
From Mr S. P. Simpson, MRPharmS
I was somewhat confused by your article on emergency
supplies to tourists (PJ, 16 July, p76). The article stated that “patients are charged
a private fee of £6.50, or more if the item is expensive. They
are given a refund if they later produce an NHS prescription for the
item.” Perhaps the Royal Pharmaceutical Society can confirm the
legality of offering a refund on emergency supply fees when an NHS prescription
is presented at a later date. Did the respondent in question dispense
the NHS prescription, less the quantity supplied in the emergency? If
so, is this now acceptable?
Steven Simpson
Sidmouth, Devon
Please clarify!
From Mr D. B. Needleman, MRPharmS
The news
feature “Emergency supplies to tourists on the up as
GPs opt out of weekend working” (PJ, 16 July, p76) did not say
much that was not new, but when I got to the last two paragraphs I was
amazed.
The revelation that “patients are charged a private fee of £6.50,
or more if the item is expensive” seemed fine but the next line,
that “they are given a refund if they later produce an NHS prescription
for the item”, surprised me. To read this admission, blatantly
stated in the article, that they give refunds for private sales on production
of an NHS prescription, was tantamount to a guilty plea in court. What
amazed me even more was the fact that the next paragraph, which quotes
Lynsey Balmer, head of professional ethics at the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society, in defining the role of pharmacists in making emergency supplies,
completely overlooked the implications as stated above.
Am I being stupid? Has the “Medicines, ethics and practice guide” changed
its rules, gone out of print or is it being completely ignored? I was
always led to believe that emergency supplies were a supply by way of
retail trade and completely outside the remit of the NHS, therefore excluding
any refund against a future presented NHS prescription, as this would
be a breach of contract and also illegal.
Please clarify.
David Needleman
Stanmore, Middlesex
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LYNSEY BALMER, head of professional ethics at the Royal Pharmaceutical
Society, replies:
While I provided the author (PJ, 16 July, p76) with
information on the professional considerations that pharmacists have
when dealing with requests for emergency supplies, I was not involved
in drafting
the article. I can however offer the following guidance to the questions
raised.
The Prescription Only Medicines (Human Use) Order 1997 allows pharmacists
to provide emergency supplies at the request of either an appropriate
practitioner or a patient, but does not make any reference to payment.
An emergency supply is a private transaction and pharmacists may charge
for this. The amount charged, if any, is determined at the pharmacist’s
discretion.
Where a pharmacist makes an emergency supply and the patient later
presents a prescription, the pharmacist clearly has two possible options.
He
may choose to treat the prescription separately to the emergency supply — the
FP10 will attract such charges as would otherwise apply for the patient
and the emergency supply will attract whatever fees and reimbursement
the pharmacist chooses to add. Alternatively, the pharmacist may agree
to make an emergency supply as lawfully allowed, making all relevant
entries in the prescription register, and then choose to deduct the
quantity of
the emergency supply from the quantity ordered on the prescription.
It is then up to the pharmacist to decide whether to charge for the
emergency
supply, or make a charge and refund it on production of the prescription.
The new issue of the “Medicines, ethics and practice guide” was
published earlier this month, and the content on emergency supplies
has not altered. |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal