BBC website is reporting that 3 shortage products will have a temporary restriction to 3 months supply on prescriptions to help ‘even out’ supply. It says anyone with a longer prescription (presumably on repeat or already issued) won’t have to pay extra charges to get the rest of their supply.
I’m not sure how much of the problem is created by women having long and large quantity prescriptions, or simply the fact there are so many women on Oestrogel now, but I guess it will help a bit.
I suspect it will cause some prescription chaos as lots of GPs are. It especially good at getting quantities for a certain number of pumps over a certain period right anyway. Plus, lots of women will end up with unbalanced prescriptions - perhaps 6 months supply of Utrogestan and only 3 of Oestrogel. I wonder if many women will face more inconvenience and hassle as a result.
Is this because the HRT shortage has become a big media issue now and the government has to be seen to act and do something. Whether this is the right thing to do or could create more problems doesn’t matter, but they can now say action has been taken??
And interesting to see how this impacts those women who are struggling to get more than 1 mo th of supply anyway. Will it make those GPs realise that many areas are prescribing far more usually, or confirm to them that their short prescribing is the way to go.
Not sure when this takes effect, but anyone sitting on a prescription or who has a repeat that they activate electronically might consider activating it!
Hope it does help more women get what they need and tide the system over until supply increases and they actually then do return to letting people have a 6 month supply, if they have found a system that works for them.
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Topic: Temporary restriction on HRT prescriptions to 3 months due to shortages (Read 1492 times)