Filling your prescription in the North

DublinWriter

We've been going up to Newry/Banbridge for years now and it only occurred to us recently that we can get our prescriptions filled up there for nearly 50% the cost.

I rang Boots Newry last week to compare and contrast prices.

For example, one of my wife's inhalers costs €86 here, it's £54 in Newry. Similarly, my own blood-pressure medicine is €12 here, but only £4.50 up North.

I brought up the family 'scripts today and saved about €100 on the total. I asked the pharmacist did they fill out many 'scripts from the south and she said all the time - they did about €1,000 of business just from southern customers yesterday alone.

I think it's about time for the IPU to wake up and smell the coffee.

bmaxi

DublinWriter wrote: »

We've been going up to Newry/Banbridge for years now and it only occurred to us recently that we can get our prescriptions filled up there for nearly 50% the cost.

I rang Boots Newry last week to compare and contrast prices.

For example, one of my wife's inhalers costs €86 here, it's £54 in Newry. Similarly, my own blood-pressure medicine is €12 here, but only £4.50 up North.

I brought up the family 'scripts today and saved about €100 on the total. I asked the pharmacist did they fill out many 'scripts from the south and she said all the time - they did about €1,000 of business just from southern customers yesterday alone.

I think it's about time for the IPU to wake up and smell the coffee.

Cue the rates, wages, cost of living excuse.
My local councillor, also a hard pressed rural publican, nearly flooded the council chamber with tears as he told of how hard it is to make ends meet in small businesses and how rates were crippling him. He was so overcome, he found it difficult to walk to his 2011 BMW 550. Ochón, Ochón.

Kurtosis

DublinWriter wrote: »

I think it's about time for the IPU to wake up and smell the coffee.

It's actually not up to them. The price of medicines being sold into this country is set by an agreement between the pharmaceutical manufacturers and the government. On top of this most of the generic medicines here are priced only a few cent below the originator brand, or as is the case with a number of products at the moment the generic is more expensive, and pharmacists do not have the power to offer generic substitution. Policy issues are the main factors at play here. I suspect if a pharmacy here took no margin/dispensing fee when dispensing a prescription, they would still not be able to beat the prices up North.

All the same, until such issues are resolved in pharmacy here, pharmacies up North offer great value.

td2008

I asked about this in boots when i was in manchester and they said you needed the doctors GMC (i think) number on the prescription?
Tried superdrug and they didn't care about it, just was missing the date

Would work out at 70 euro instead of 120 montly, going to try the north next month

maxer68

Pharmacuetical prices are set by a combination og the dept of health & the distributors. Some high priced drugsa re far cheaper hear, whilst some low price ones are for more expensive here.

But once you pay over €100 a month (Might have gone up) everything above that is free.

So Ireland is brilliant if you need expensive prescriptions, but can be very expensive if you only need to odd item.

If its an over the counter medicine, you can buy safely online wherever you wish - i get hayfever spray from New zealand - the 120 spray size bottle is the same price as the 60 spray one is here.

DublinWriter

maxer68 wrote: »

But once you pay over €100 a month (Might have gone up) everything above that is free.

Sooo...if my the 'script for my wife's expensive €85 inhalers specifies that she gets them all in one go (usually 6 per script that we get one at a time), I only pay €100?

Kurtosis

DublinWriter wrote: »

Sooo...if my the 'script for my wife's expensive €85 inhalers specifies that she gets them all in one go (usually 6 per script that we get one at a time), I only pay €100?

The arrangement maxer is talking about is the Drugs Payment Scheme (DPS) and the current threshold is €120. This applies to the monthly prescription medicines spend for a household per month for one month's supply of medicines in any one pharmacy. So if the inhaler was being used twice daily, and there were 60 doses in it, one inhaler would count as one month's supply and if you wanted to buy more than one month's supply at a time, the DPS threshold wouldn't apply.

This part of the HSE website probably explains it a lot clearer and more succinctly than me!