simont | (no subject)

This week I've got round to starting to arrange getting gluten-free foods on prescription.

This is really silly. I would have hoped that the sensible way to do this would be to issue me with some sort of coeliac certificate, which I could then display in some fashion to get a discount when buying whatever I happened to fancy that month from gluten-free-food companies. But no; instead it's done through the ordinary prescription mechanism, and each GF food product is individually prescribable. So I had to actually go and talk to my GP and make a specific request for each of the particular things I wanted.

It seems completely daft to me that I have to waste the time of a highly trained medical professional on business which could be handled just as well by a supermarket checkout clerk. She insisted that because it really was a form of medical treatment it was perfectly reasonable, but she can insist that all she wants and it won't shake my opinion that changing my mind about my preference in pizza bases is not a worthwhile use of a doctor's valuable time.

So yesterday I dropped my prescription off at Boots, and today I have to go back and collect the stuff (which they had to order in). This is silly.

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Incredibly silly. Still, at least you can get assistance with buying the food.

That's a coincidence. I did that for the first time yesterday as well. I didn't speak to my doctor though - I just left my shopping list with the receptionist at the surgery.

ISTR seeing press for services that deliver your repeat prescriptions (the stuff, not the pieces of paper) for you. Not that I have any to hand I'm afraid...

*Boggle*. Well, presumably you'll be getting a prescription prepayment* and get it put on repeat prescription to cover this kind of thing, so it's merely a complete faff on your part, but doesn't involve that much effort on the part of the doctor? Does it have to be a doctor, or could you get one of the nurses** to do it? Of course, that's still taking up the time of a trained medical professional :-/

*Effectively free food, how neat ;-)
**Who appear to be being increasingly able to prescribe stuff, which is good.

Indeed, I already have a repeat prescription process set up, and in fact the doctor said that if I wanted something different I should just write the details on the repeat slip before dropping it in to the surgery; so after the first occasion I probably won't need to waste much of her valuable time. Still seems silly that it has to be done at all, though.

Boots told me that once I got a pre-payment certificate (which my sister insists on calling a "prescription season ticket" :-) they could retrospectively refund me on the prescriptions I've picked up so far, which struck me as well above the call of duty!

So how does that work then? I was wondering whether you had to pay a prescription charge per pizza base.

Pre-payment certificates. It is essentially a season ticket mechanism :-)

if I wanted something different I should just write the details on the repeat slip before dropping it in to the surgery;

Oh, that's good! My surgery is rubbish about that, I can't change anything on my repeat slip, not even the number of things that I want.

Boots told me that once I got a pre-payment certificate

I don't suppose my Cunning Trick would work as well for you. The trick being to get a 4 month prepayment, then in that 4 months get the doctor to give you medicine for about 8-10 months. Then don't get another certificate until the stock has run down.

My surgery is rubbish about that, I can't change anything on my repeat slip, not even the number of things that I want.

Well, I wouldn't have too much trouble believing that that was a more sensible attitude to drugs than to harmless food products, so perhaps it's dependent on the items being prescribed rather than the surgery? (Or do you get stuff on prescription which is comparable to my gluten-free pizza bases?)

*Nods* I suppose it could depend on what was being prescribed. I gather from the receptionist (who may not have been telling the whole truth for all I know) that they print out the prescription and take it to the doctor who signs it. They can't make any changes, and they won't/don't ask the doctor to make changes.

The stuff I get mostly isn't OTC stuff, and none of it is exactly innocuous, but even the non-repeat stuff isn't very hard to get hold of either: it seems to be quite easy to just say "give me foo", without what I'd think of as a "proper" check that you really should have it. (e.g. "Please give me X specific brand of excema cream" gets the response of "Here you are" not "Do you have excema?" or "Show me the sore patch")

Have you seen Appendix 7 of the BNF? This lists all the possible foods you can get your doctor to prescribe (pages 768-9 lists the foods prescribable for coeliac disease/gluten-sensitive enteropathies) - I guess you'll probably want to experiment a bit with the different types of gluten free biscuits/flour/rice/bread to find the ones you like.

I can't get in to that site - it asks me for a password.

However, I have a little booklet sent to me by Coeliac UK which contains a list that I suspect will turn out to be be pretty similar to that one.

It shouldn't be too hard to register with it (http://www.bnf.org/bnf/openat/registration.htm) and I've never had a problem with spam from that site.

I can't get anything useful from the Coeliac UK site atm, 'cos of work restrictions, but I'd guess the info they provide is pretty similar. The only thing to watch out for would be when it was written - the BNF is updated every six months, I'd imagine that the info that Coeliac UK supply isn't necessarily that up to date.

I don't think you'll find the information on the Coeliac UK website itself. They only sent me the booklet when I signed up as a member (for which I had to declare that I'd been diagnosed with coeliac disease).

Their booklet is updated at least once a year, so although it might not be quite as up to date as something updated every six months, I'm pretty confident it won't be a serious problem.

Bah, maybe if I threaten to stop eating the NHS will pay for my food.

Funnily enough, I've heard people propose that political reform. Basically everyone would get as much food as they could eat free, but it wouldn't be very nice. It's always a fascinating argument because there are so many things wrong or troubling about the idea, yet it continues to hold a tantilising hint of being the only workable solution.