I’ve been Asthmatic ever since I was about 14, and I’ve been on the same combination of medications to keep it in check since about around 19. I’m fairly clued up on my condition, and I pretty-much manage to self-medicate myself. I need the same meds, every month. I’m happy.
At least, if I had a competent GP surgery, I would be. I always, always seem to struggle to get my GP’s (I’ve moved around the country a bit, so I’ve had a few) to understand this. The doc I saw in Grimsby got the combination just right, when I was about 19 – and I’ve been perfectly happy on this medication ever since. Every GP since has been a nightmare.
If you’re Asthmatic, you usually have to attend what most practices refer to as their ‘Asthma Clinic’ every 3-6 months. This is probably some scheme dreamed up to release some NHS funding to the practice, but in reality is a complete and utter waste of time. What makes it more tricky, is that most surgeries start getting arsey and refuse to issue prescriptions if you don’t attend ‘Asthma Clinic’. So, every once in a while, I’ve got to book time off work to go to one of these ridiculous sessions.
The last one I attended, at the Burncross Surgery in Chapeltown (my previous GP), had me waiting for 50 minutes after my booked appointment time before an ‘asthma nurse’ saw me, just to measure my peak flow (measuring one’s peak flow, for those of you with lungs that aren’t completely fucked, is a 10 second test that measures the capacity of your lungs by blowing into a tube) and then to tell me to go home! Wow. Thanks. You’re really supporting my condition.
Repeat prescriptions are also a royal pain. I have three items on my prescription, all of which roughly will last 1 month. That’s £20.55. £20.55 per month, probably for the rest of my adult life. Nice break, huh?
In order to lessen this pain, it’s not unreasonable to ask the GP to issue you with 2 of each item, as, perversely in NHS logic prescription charges are levied per-line and not per-item. So, theoretically at least, I could request 500 Combivent inhalers (mmmm, my favourite!) and only pay £6.85 for them. So, I do this (requesting 2, not 500!), and generally attempt to pick up my prescription bi-monthly.
You’d think there’d be some logic in the system that added up that a person requires these prescription items on a long-term basis, but, no – each and every time I request a repeat, I have to justify to the surgery why I require more. I could stop taking my drugs, sure, but I’d soon find myself in A&E with an attack – just like I did when I stopped when I was 18.
What’s more, the new surgery have a frankly bizarre rule stating that they’ll only entertain requests for repeat prescriptions between the hours of 10:30am and 12:30pm Monday to Friday! Well, that’s just extra convenient!
Yep, that’s us, us Asthma sufferers – burdening the NHS with our broken lungs! Heaven forbid we should get in the way of the free nicotine gum doled out to smokers or the methadone given to the junkies!
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There is a general guideline from up-high somewhere in the NHS, that PXs should be for no more than 28 days supply – that’s why your GPs (and mine too) will no longer give your two inhalers on a single PX.
The good news is that you can buy a prescription pre-payment certificate for a year which means that you pay a fixed price for PXs in the year, and no longer pay per PX. You can find out more, and sign up too here.
The yearly rate is just under £100, so you would save a fortune by signing up to this. They say the break-even point is 14 PXs in a year, and you must get something like 40…
As a fellow well-controlled and self-medicating asthmatic, I can fully sympathise with your Asthma Clinic woes. Perhaps luckily, my Surgery only require that I attend one every 12 months. It’s still a pointless waste of time though…
I’ve had a pre-payment certificate before, and yes, you’re right – they ease the financial burden. Presently, my certificate has lapsed, so I guess I’ll need to sign up for a new one. It still doesn’t solve the issue of actually ordering repeats though.
After a recent attack (brought on by playing with fireworks for the first time in years) I had all my drugs swapped around and I now go through very little ventolin.
My question is why didn’t they do this years ago? Why did it take me going through 4 ventolins in 2 weeks for them to decide I’d be better off taking a different inhaler twice a day instead of the ventolin 3 or 4 times?
Also, why do some chronic diseases (diabetes for example) qualify you for free prescriptions, yet others (asthma) dont?