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Hand written and hand delivered prescriptions

Posted By swingmw44

"Hand written and hand delivered prescriptions"

About: Musgrove Park Hospital / Gynaecology

(as a service user),

I had a really positive visit to the gynae clinic at Musgrove and the consultant and the HCA who looked after me were really friendly and reassuring.  Thank you for your kind manner. :)

However, I was given a prescription by the consultant that they could not prescribe personally.  So they hand-wrote a prescription form that I then needed to personally deliver to my GP's surgery, several miles away, for the GP to then write the prescription, and then for it to be processed.

I did query this at the time but was told there was no other or electronic way of doing this.

This seems rather daft.  I have not yet sorted this out because making a trip during working hours to deliver this to my GP surgery and explain to the receptionist is a bit of a pain.  So the letter is still sitting in my handbag.  Could this process not be done electronically in some way?

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Responses

Response from Karen Holden, Associate Director of Patient Centred Care, Patient Experience, Musgrove Park Hospital 5 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
Karen Holden
Associate Director of Patient Centred Care, Patient Experience,
Musgrove Park Hospital

Submitted on 08/11/2018 at 11:47
Published on Care Opinion at 13:58

picture of Karen Holden

Dear swingmw44, thank you for the time for sharing your positive experience with our gynae team and we really appreciate your improvement suggestion. I have shared this with the team to see what can be done to improve it.

I am sorry for the inconvenience this caused and hope that we can make this better for other patients. I am also sorry for the delay in response, we are now ensuring we have some responders from our gynae services.

Kind regards

Karen

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Response from Karen Holden, Associate Director of Patient Centred Care, Patient Experience, Musgrove Park Hospital 5 years ago
Karen Holden
Associate Director of Patient Centred Care, Patient Experience,
Musgrove Park Hospital

Submitted on 09/11/2018 at 11:12
Published on Care Opinion at 13:43

picture of Karen Holden

Hello again. I have spoken to our gynaecology service and our chief pharmacist to share your story and to understand the process. I hope I can relay the information well enough but do come back to me if not.

Firstly, they were sympathetic that this process causes inconvenience to you and other patients in your position. Essentially the process is this way because there is a national agreement that some types of medications are the responsibility of the primary care (GP) and that they can only be prescribed by them and secondary care (in your case the consultant at the hospital) can only recommend their prescription. This process means that the GP is legally responsible for the outcome and monitoring of you on that medication and also the cost.

We can though send the GP the recommendation for the medication via an electronic clinic letter. Please come back to me via my email address below, with your details, if you would like to check whether this happened in your situation. However, you would still need to go to the GP and pick up the prescription and take to a dispensary.

Many GP's do offer electronic prescription services, where with your agreement the prescription can be electronically sent to a pharmacy of your choice. Please talk with your GP service about what they can offer.

I hope that makes some sense and explains why the process is as it is.

Kind regards

Karen

Karen.Holden@tst.nhs.uk

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