Private Prescriptions

benjus

I have use of a private GP service provided by my employer - I guess it suits them more for me to pop across the road from the office to see a GP who is always on time than to take a day working from home and sit in my NHS GP's waiting room for half an hour or more.

Of course if they issue me a prescription it's a private prescription and not an NHS prescription, so in theory the pharmacy should charge me whatever the market value of the medicine is.

However, I've noticed that most pharmacies practise minimum pricing on private prescriptions. Some examples:

• Boots charges at least the NHS rate for each item on the prescription (so £8.80 currently)
• Lloyds pharmacy charges at least £5 per item
• A local independent pharmacy charged at least a whopping £14 per item

Lloyd's pharmacy isn't too bad, but the practice in general feels like abuse of a captive market.

Does anyone know of any pharmacies that either don't use minimum pricing at all, set a very low minimum, or add a small fixed dispensing fee to the medicine price?

silvercar

It's a free market so ring around and compare prices. There are also online pharmacies that may offer more competitive prices. Your view on the reliability of online purchases, there are a lot of fake drugs out there.

Toothsmith

I know a Tesco pharmacy near me charged someone £2 for an Amoxicilllin 500mg prescription (7 days) a couple of weeks ago.

I have been writing pvt prescriptions for years though, and the pharmacies around me know I will direct patients elsewhere if they take the mickey too much!!

pmduk

If you do fill your prescription online, make sure the pharmacy is properly registered.

benjus

Thanks for the tips. I did briefly look at online pharmacies, but the only one that looked remotely competitive on prices (for the medicines I checked) was pharmacy2u, and even then the difference was quite marginal so once you add the delivery charge it wasn't cost effective. Plus having to send the prescription to them in the post is a pain.

Just looking at the price of a ventolin inhaler - at Lloyds online they are charging £15 each, but when bought at Lloyds in store it was £5 (the minimum price). The price at pharmacy2u is £1.88, so I guess that's more or less what it would have been at Lloyds if they didn't have minimum pricing (but pharmacy2u delivery is £3.45).

In general I've found that high street pharmacies are competitive when it comes to the unit cost of medicines for private prescriptions - it's just the minimum pricing that causes issues. When I've had a prescription for a larger quantity of tablets that pushes the price above the minimum pricing, Boots has been great (6p per tablet, compared to pharmacy2u's 9p per tablet + delivery).

Sounds like Tesco is the next one to try.

pmduk

Asda pharmacies used to be very competitive for Ventolin inhalers. I'm not sure about recent pricing.

Have you considered talking to your Doctor about generic alternatives?

benjus

pmduk wrote: »

Have you considered talking to your Doctor about generic alternatives?

I think the prescription just said Salbutamol rather than Ventolin, although Ventolin was the brand that the pharmacy actually supplied.

pmduk

that is the generic then.