[Meta] the pricing rule is doing its job and people should stop complaining
the pricing rule is doing its job and people should stop complaining. This affects how posts get sorted and removed, so it belongs in the open.
A private prescription is an independent route: it does not affect NHS list position, and it is not a step in the same pathway.
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.
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.
Research-use-only material is not approved for human use and nothing here should be read as a recommendation to use it.
best — the order this archive was captured in
The two routes, described separately, because mixing them is where most of the confusion here starts.
The NHS route in England runs through specialist weight management services commissioned by your ICB. Criteria, waiting times and what happens at discharge are all local decisions, which is why a confident answer from somebody in a different area may be wrong for you.
The private route is an independent transaction: a consultation, a prescription and a pharmacy price. It does not affect your position on any NHS list and it is not a shortcut through one. Both are legitimate; they are simply not the same pathway and they do not connect.
Push back: a private prescription is a separate route, not a shortcut through the NHS queue.
Same. My ICB threshold was different from the neighbouring one and nobody could tell me why.
GP said no in the spring, specialist said yes eighteen months later. Same person, same numbers.
GP said no in the spring, specialist said yes eighteen months later.
Adding the practical bit — ask what happens at discharge before you start, not after.
tier 3 waiting lists are measured in years, not months
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.
Cosigning on discharge at goal. It catches people who have done everything right and did not know it was coming.
specialist service, not GP, for tier 3 in most of England
no referral links, ever, and that rule is why the pricing threads work
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are four different pathways
Left up. It names a nation and an ICB, which is all we ask of a pathway post.
Disagree. That is the pathway in one ICB and it does not generalise even to the next one over.
ask the pharmacy for the price list, not the headline offer
Switched pharmacies mid-titration and had to restart the ladder because the concentrations did not line up.
BMI thresholds vary by ICB and by year
keep every letter, the dates matter later
Correction: that threshold is your ICB’s, not a national one. They differ and they change by year.
Right, and reading the actual supply notice rather than the coverage of it saves a fortnight of speculation.
- 1GP said no in the spring, specialist said yes eighteen months later. Same…8 comments in this branch · started by u/dhl_or_bust