[Discussion] we are measuring pharmacy at the wrong time and calling it noise
we are measuring pharmacy at the wrong time and calling it noise. It is the sort of thing everyone half-believes and nobody writes down.
Two years and four months on a tier 3 list. Referral date and every letter kept, which turned out to matter when the service reorganised.
Four pharmacies, four prices, same product, same month. The spread was larger than I expected and none of them were the headline offer.
GP said no in the spring, specialist said yes eighteen months later. Same person, same numbers.
That is everything I have. The rest is opinion and I have tried to keep it out.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Why the monthly pricing tracker works, and the rule that makes it work.
Members post the pharmacy, the product, the month and the price they actually paid — not an advertised offer, not a first-month discount. No links of any kind are permitted, which removes the entire incentive to post anything other than what happened.
The result is that the spread between pharmacies in a given month is visible, and it is consistently larger than people expect. That single table has saved members here more money than every other thread on the board combined, and it survives only because the no-links rule is enforced without exception.
Discharged at goal back to the GP, who would not continue it. Nobody had mentioned that this was how it ends.
Discharge from a specialist service at goal is a normal end point of that pathway. Whether prescribing continues in primary care afterwards is a local decision and is worth asking about at the start rather than at the end.
Disagree. That is the pathway in one ICB and it does not generalise even to the next one over.
A private prescription is an independent route: it does not affect NHS list position, and it is not a step in the same pathway.
A private prescription is an independent route: it does not affect NHS list position, and it is not a step in the same pathway.
Agreed — and keeping the letters with dates is what makes any later challenge possible.
Push back: a private prescription is a separate route, not a shortcut through the NHS queue.
Right, and reading the actual supply notice rather than the coverage of it saves a fortnight of speculation.
GP said no and specialist said yes is a very common sequence
Yes — the consultation that asks nothing tells you what kind of service it is.
In England, specialist weight management services are commissioned locally, so eligibility criteria and waiting times differ by ICB. There is no single national threshold to quote.
Small fix — that is the Scottish pathway. The post is asking about England and the answer is different.
Small fix — that is the Scottish pathway.
This is why national advice does not work here. It is commissioned locally and it varies.
Discharge at goal, which nobody warns people about.
Specialist services in England are commissioned to deliver a defined intervention. Reaching goal is a successful outcome and it typically ends with discharge back to primary care. Whether prescribing continues after that is a local decision that varies, and plenty of members here have discovered it at the point of discharge rather than at the start.
The useful thing to do is ask early: what happens when I finish, and does prescribing continue in primary care in this area. Ask it in writing, keep the answer, and you will at least know which conversation you are heading for.
Correcting myself: the referral was 8 months ago, not the figure I gave. I keep rounding it down.
Correcting myself: the referral was 8 months ago, not the figure I gave.
Disagreeing with this line: that is the arrangement in one nation and the question is about another.
the price difference between pharmacies this month is genuinely large
Pharmacy pricing on a private prescription is set by the pharmacy. The spread between them in a given month is routinely substantial, which is why a tracker built from member reports is more useful than any headline.
Cosigning on discharge at goal. It catches people who have done everything right and did not know it was coming.
Agreed on keeping letters. Dates are what make an appeal or a re-referral possible.
ask the pharmacy for the price list, not the headline offer
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements. An answer that begins with "in England" should say so, and most of the confusion here comes from answers that do not.
The scheme cap in Ireland was the single most useful thing I learned in a year of reading this board.
Concentrations can differ between products and between pharmacies. Switching mid-titration means redoing the arithmetic rather than carrying the old unit count across.
This. The monthly pricing tracker is the most useful thing on this board and it works because nobody is allowed to link anything.
specialist service, not GP, for tier 3 in most of England
Is this a discharge back to the GP, or a discontinuation?
- 1Disagree. That is the pathway in one ICB and it does not generalise even to…7 comments in this branch · started by u/mei_cardoso