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The familiar NHS prescription pad
can only be used by NHS GPs. People who are not exempt from prescription
charges pay a standard fee of £6.30 per item, no matter the
actual cost of the drug to the NHS. Some prescriptions are actually
quite cheap – for example 100 paracetamol tablets cost the
NHS a basic price of about £0.75 and a week’s course
of penicillin tablets for an adult is less than £2.00. On
top of the basic drug cost the NHS pays a dispensing fee to the
pharmacist, so the final cost is higher, but often still below the
prescription charge. The other side of the coin is that many drugs,
particularly new ones, are expensive and cost much more than the
standard prescription charge for a month’s supply.
As a private GP I must prescribe drugs ‘privately’.
This means that instead of an NHS pad I use my own headed notepaper.
Instead of a standard prescription charge you pay the pharmacist
the true cost of the medicine, plus his dispensing fee. For many
commonly used drugs this will end up cheaper than the NHS charge
you would normally pay. For more expensive drugs you will need to
pay the full cost.
If you need a number of expensive medicines
long term then it would become costly to always buy them privately.
In those circumstances I recommend that I liase with your NHS GP
about what you are taking. The majority of the time it is likely
that if your medication regime is working well, then your NHS GP
will wish to continue the same medicines.
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