Many of our patients have a number of their medicines prescribed as repeat medicines. This means that the medicines are for longer term conditions such as medicines to treat high blood pressure or asthma and as these do not change every month, the person does not have to see a GP each time. There is a list of these medicines on the right hand side of all of your prescriptions. Please destroy all old repeat lists if you use them for re-ordering as this may lead to errors. On average 72 hours is all you need from notifying the practice that you require a further supply to the prescription being ready for collection at the surgery or your chosen pharmacy. Some medicines may need to be ordered from specialist companies which takes a bit longer and your pharmacy will let you know if this is the case. For safety and financial reasons it is very important that people do not stock-pile medicines so we would urge you to check each area where you may store your medicines and wait until you have around about a weeks supply before reordering unless going away from home for a period of time.
Ensuring that your repeat medication is up to date is also very important as should you be admitted to hospital or have to visit a GP in another area (e.g. whilst on holiday) your repeat medication can be accessed electronically through something called an emergency care summary or by looking at the list from the right hand side of your prescription form. Some of you may notice over the coming months that we have altered this list to reflect what you are actually taking by removing drugs no longer required or altering quantities so that you have approximately the same monthly amount for each regular medicine. This is important because should you inadvertently receive a medication you no longer require, due to legislation, the medicines cannot be reissued by a pharmacy or GP therefore are wasted. Currently we estimate that wasted medicines costs us locally about £1 million per year.
Sometimes medicines are issued as acute medicines i.e. are not on your regular repeat list. The prescription looks the same but from request to collection it may take a little longer as the GP has to check your notes and may need to see you before issuing another prescription.
Please help us to keep your repeat medication list as accurate as possible by letting us know if you no longer take any of your medicines. In this way we will improve your safety and reduce any unnecessary cost.