Getting medication
Hello everyone , Myself and my wife are planning to sell our home and travel within the UK for a year or two , we will still have a home but will rent it out . One issue is we both need to take medication and our GP practice will not continue prescribing to us if we are travelling around and trying to use different pharmacies in the UK. Has anyone else experience of getting around this problem please ?
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I think you need to go back to your GP practice and ask them their reasons.
When we are away, though it's not on the sort of time scale you are talking about, we have occasionally forgotten medication. All our practice asks for is the reference number of the local pharmacy and they will supply it pretty much immediately.
Hope you get it sorted out.
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I appreciate that this is not much help but I suspect most people in the same situation imagine their local surgery will be sympathetic to what you want but many are not. There are rules that if followed to the letter mean you have to reregister at your surgery if you are away for more than three months. Now not all surgeries will follow that to the letter. One can perhaps understand a surgery not wanting to prescribe medication in the long term if they have no means of regular check ups. JVB's suggestion of using an online pharmacy to deliver to where you are around the country is probably the way to go. It really depends whether you can find a way for your surgery to reconsider. One question I would ask is if the new house you have purchased is in the same catchment area as the old one? Could you register there with limited details of your where abouts?
David
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Orinoco, I would make an appointment to see a local GP as a temporary visitor patient in whichever part of UK you are. Explain your situation, take your NHS number and previous prescription, ask for repeat medication or fresh consultation, then take script to local pharmacy. If I manage to do that overseas in a foreign language you can do it in UK.
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There are plenty of folks who successfully do it so must be a work around. I suggest you look at the ‘full timers’ forum in Motorhome Fun - lots of relevant stuff there but you’ll need to pay a modest subscription. Slightly off-topic but I know folks who’ve purchased very cheaply, what would be prescription medication in the UK from pharmacies in places like Spain and have purchased enough for a year a more. Worth checking if your plans change to include overseas.
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Do you have relatives that live in your immediate area and that you could "move" in with whilst you house hunt?
My brother did something similar a few years ago when he and SiL were using their caravan as living base to make decorative glassware items and sell them at country fayres around the country. We merely posted the meds off to a campsite or P.O.Box. Of course you have to be well organised but there are loads of delivery organisations operating these days and next day delivery can be virtually guaranteed.
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ET wrote: I would make an appointment to see a local GP as a temporary visitor patient in whichever part of UK you are.
To use that famous tennis phrase - you cannot be serous. It's well nigh impossible to get an appointment or even contact your own surgery by phone. The chances for a "stranger in these her parts" must be vanishingly small.
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Not a problem here in rural Cornwall, CY, though even at our big medical practice with 10 doctors on the books, the receptionist would most likely arrange for you to see one of the three paramedics or two nurse practitioners, who can all prescribe, and who probably would deal with a small problem of this sort. Number 2 son, here from Hong Kong in mid lockdown, had no trouble getting a renewed prescription for insulin that way.
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Many thanks to all you kind people who have made suggestions. We are moving out of the area when we sell our house and buying a small flat and renting it out ( probably to our son) , I'll think about some of the ideas particularly the Motorhome Fun forum ( thanks Seaside Bill ! )
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I aso do as JVB suggests, use Lloyds Direct. You submit your prescription using your computing device to your home surgery and request it is sent to Lloyds Direct. Lloyds witll email you asking you to verify which medication is required and when you do this on their web site, you can then state where you want it delivered, either an address or the nearest Lloyds Pharmacy for collection.
I have Lloyds Direct set as the default with my local surgery. If your surgery can handle electronic prescriptions it should not be a problem.
peedee
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