Probably not applicable to you but our doctor's surgery has it's own pharmacy. It offered a free, repeat prescription delivery service for those who were eligible (can't remember the eligibility rules but maybe because the surgery covers a large rural area) but has now added a fee of £35 a year.
Frustration ensues if they don't have what you need when you get there? Now that phone calls are (relatively) free we can contact the dispensary to find out if our prescription is ready before making the 5 mile journey.
Mine does too, but I can't use it (I think it's for the surgery's more distant patients) but there is a private pharmacy literally 20 yards across the road from the surgery.
I use the pharmacy in Morrisons and they send me an email when mine is ready for collection.
OP of this thread. I, too, use Morrison's and have never thought of asking for the email. Q1 Do they automatically order for you, or do you have to order via your surgery? (Patient Access/NHS App in my case). Q2 Have you (or anyone else here) tried the delivery service for medications? You may have guessed by now, that I can currently stagger round, but am looking forward.
I order online from the surgery who send the prescription to Morrisons (they offer other choices, I chose the one with the big free car park).
I had to sign up with Morrisons pharmacy, they were pushing it, perhaps to reduce the number of calls asking if the prescription was read.
Works brilliantly.
What I did was order my repeat prescription approx 3/4 weeks in advance. The approved prescription was then sent to the local pharmacy. I left it a week to pick up by which time everything was bagged and a member of staff just handed over the bag. Leaving a week for pick-up gave the pharmacy time to source any items they didn't have in stock.
That's what used to happen.......
The pharmacy has changed hands. Now what happens is nothing is done in the customers absence. Leave the prescription a week before picking up and now its not bagged up. The pharmacist will only start preparing the prescription when you reach the counter. This has resulted in long queues. An hour waiting to get to the counter and other staff in the shop receiving a lot of abuse. I've been told that the long queues have been going on since the new pharmacist took over 3 weeks ago. It gets worse, as they don't process that prescription until I'm there any missing item results in a shortage note and another 1 hour of queuing to get hold of it a few days later. I'm about to change the pharmacy where my prescription is delivered but unfortunately this will result in a 30 minute round trip rather then the two minute walk each way to the pharmacy I previously used.
And that's pretty much what happens here. The pharmacy is part of the Health Centre, I order online about 8 days before I need them. I get a text message, the timing of which is a bit haphazard, and I go up to the pharmacy either when convenient or on the 8th day. Confirm d-o-b and address, and away. Occasionally, an item is back-ordered, but I have never been left without a drug.
Odd. This is exactly what happened at my local pharmacy a few months ago. The counter staff haven't changed, nor has at least one of the backroom people. I'm told it is just a result of a heavy workload since Easter. It's one of the Shadforth chain. It's a fairly small one, so queues not too bad.
On a related note, if your pharmacy really can't get something, and my local uses at least three suppliers that I know of, they will return the prescription to you, but only in its entirety. Boots have a website on which the stock levels of medicines can be checked at various nearby branches.
A PS I was in my local Morrisons today. They neither do the email thing nor deliver. That's one off my future list. :(
Going back a few years (pre-Covid) I found there was only a tiny window of opportunity between the Surgery rejecting a (repeat) prescription request (because it was too early) and the Pharmacy saying they hadn't enough time to process the prescription - before I ran out of drugs.>
Ours changed hands around 2 years ago. Things got so bad that around
40% of customers decided to switch to other pharmacies in the area.This meant that they could now cope with the reduced demand, but I wonder if the chain it belongs to will decide to close the place - because it isn't making the profit that they expected.
Your Morrison's has a pharmacy? What next!
My local Tesco has one. Never been in it
We get our prescriptions from the surgery’s in house dispensary . The rule at ours is that you have to live more than one mile from a chemist. The way they describe it on the surgeries website it sounds like if not an actual rule it is an NHS ( England) guideline.
GH
The rest of the store pretty awful, but the pharmacy is good, and busy.
My GP surgery has an arrangement where patients can be given a username and password that allows them to order a repeat prescription online, having set up a pharmacy to receive the prescription electronically. The patient can arrange with the pharmacy to deliver what was prescribed. That works well, because the online "reorder" screen shows all the medications that are permitted and the patient can tick boxes for the ones wanted and leave unticked the ones that are not wanted. There is a "Submit prescription" button at the bottom of the screen so there is a chance to reconsider before sending it in.
During the coronavirus lock-down times the pharmacy did deliver mine, but I prefer to go and fetch them now while I am still fit enough to get fresh air and exercise.
I believe that there is now a similar facility on the NHS website, but I haven't investigated that.
I have a relative that has no internet, and if she wants something she can't find in the local shops she phones me and I order it for delivery to her.
I ordered a couple of cables (her dog had chewed the ones he had, luckily not connected at the time). The company I ordered from chose Royal Mail to deliver. I give my email address on these orders so that I can phone through any delivery news.
These two cables shouldn't have been a problem. Yet I got an email one day from Royal Mail saying that they "knocked and there was nobody in. Will try again tomorrow". I phoned that through and was told that she had been in all day, and if anybody had knocked the dog would have barked and that didn't happen. The next day, exactly the same thing happened again. On the third day the envelope with the cables in was dropped through the letterbox. There never had been a need to knock.
Where I live there are two roads with similar names. My regular PM postman always delivers to the right address. Stand-in postmen quite often deliver to the wrong address. If it is a tracked parcel and I get the email saying it has been delivered and I haven't got it, I know I have to walk round to the same house number in a different road to collect it.
Evri is very good round here because we have a reliable driver who knows his patch. He knows which houses will take parcels in if the intended recipient isn't at home, and I sometimes get him knocking on my door to ask if I will take something in for a neighbour, because he knows the three neighbour addresses that I will look after. I also know which two neighbours take things in for me. I am fully aware that other people's experience of Evri is rather different to that.
The bad apple among the couriers in my area used to be Yodel. I was expecting a parcel via Yodel, so when the courier knocked on my door and stuck a small parcel in my hand i thought it had arrived. When I looked at the parcel after he had driven off it had a different name and address on it. It was only a 5 minute walk away so I delivered it myself. It has been a different courier for Yodel in the last couple of months and this one seems to be delivering to the correct addresses.
We used a Tesco one when the missis needed something urgently for a shingles attack prescribed by a walk in medical centre over Easter bank holiday weekend a couple of years back as our surgery wasn’t available. About 12 miles away so would not go there routinely but they were the only place open that had the drug on an Easter Sunday , during the period I waited in the car the time passed very quickly watching the reactions from a lot of people who were unaware the store apart from the pharmacy was closed on Easter Sunday and were being turned away by security staff on the door. Most turned away with no doubt a little cursing but a couple went into meltdown and got quite agitated with the door staff , by the look of them and their kids they were suffering from chip and fizzy drink , and fag withdrawal symptoms.
GH
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