Private or Hospital Prescriptions
Patients seen on the NHS are often provided NHS prescriptions from their hospital appointments. Please kindly use these at the hospital where you are seen to obtain your medication as they cannot be used in the local community pharmacy.
Those patients seen privately maybe provided private prescriptions, please do use these at any pharmacy. If the cost of these prescribed medications is an issue, please speak to your prescribing clinician for a suitable alternative.
Hospital prescriptions and private prescriptions are NOT routinely converted to an NHS prescription by the practice. Consideration to this will only be given with a supporting clinical letter and if there is a suitable reason why the original prescription cannot be used as above. As a practice we must prescribe within the guidance of our local authorities’ advice, the Integrated Care Board (ICB), and may not issue a medication prescription if the prescribed drug goes against this.
Any medication prescription request should follow the usual process and has a 4-working day turn over period. Please kindly refrain from presenting to the reception desk wanting hospital/private prescriptions to be converted immediately without any supporting clinical letters.
To avoid delays in obtaining your medication, please use hospital prescriptions and private prescriptions as they are intended to be used.
If a medication prescribed by a NHS or private doctor is to be continued beyond 4 weeks, Gade and Chorleywood Health Centres will be happy to consider prescribing that medication on the NHS following the supply of suitable letters from the specialist.
Please kindly note:
- Some medications are specialist drugs and should only be prescribed by your specialist.
- Some medications must be initiated by your specialist, and you must be stable on that medication before your GP can prescribe it.
- Some high risk drugs such as methotrexate and others, need a special agreement called a “Shared Care Agreement” to be provided to the GP. This agreement must be suitable for a GP to sign and return it to the specialist before we can issue that medication. Until this is done all high-risk drugs should be obtained from your specialist. Please note not all shared care agreements are accepted, pending conditions of the prescribed medication and its monitoring needs. We do not accept shared care agreements from private providers.