are foreign medical prescriptions valid in ireland?

waheyyy

specifically, prescriptions from the uk? just wondering if it'd be possible to have a prescription from uk but retrieve the actual medicine in ireland

bleg

Yes UK are definitely legal. However some pharmacists might be reluctant to accept them.

tim0ney

UK scripts are definitely valid. Any pharmacy will accept them. If you have a VHI number ask them to dispense the medicine under the EU scheme and you will get them free of charge.:)

locum-motion

tim0ney wrote: »

UK scripts are definitely valid. Any pharmacy will accept them. If you have a VHI number ask them to dispense the medicine under the EU scheme and you will get them free of charge.:)

Sorry, Tim, I think you mean NHS no., not VHI no.

A prescription written by a Dr. registered in the EU or Switzerland is valid in Ireland. But it is treated as a private prescription and is charged for.

A visitor from another EEA country or Switzerland is entitled to see a GP in Ireland for free. To access this service, the patient should have an EHIC, European Health Insurance Card, but an NHS card would do the trick either. The GP here should then write the prescription onto a green GMS (Medical Card) prescription form. As long as the patient's EHIC/NHS no. and address outside Ireland is written on the script, it will be dispensed free of charge by a pharmacy in Ireland.

Membership of the VHI or either of the other health insurers does not entitle you to recieve medication for free in this country.

Jessibelle

locum-motion wrote: »

A prescription written by a Dr. registered in the EU or Switzerland is valid in Ireland.

My apologies if I'm dragging this off topic, but just wanted to ask, how would a pharmacist be able to check that the prescription is authentic? Is it as simple as phoning/faxing the Doctor's surgery to verify or is there a more stringent regime in place?

locum-motion

Jessibelle wrote: »

My apologies if I'm dragging this off topic, but just wanted to ask, how would a pharmacist be able to check that the prescription is authentic? Is it as simple as phoning/faxing the Doctor's surgery to verify or is there a more stringent regime in place?

Yes, you can ring, but other than that, there's a few telltales for forged prescriptions, and a few things that point towards genuine ones.
However, I'm not going to post them on here, cos anyone that wanted to forge a script could read it.

Jessibelle

Aye, we used to get faked glasses and contact lens prescriptions in the opticians from time to time, which was bizarre in itself, until you came up against the stories sometimes used to explain them away when we went to verify them.