You Can't Get There From Here

[davidgillon]

Last Month:

GPs' surgery: Hey, sign up for online appointments and repeat prescriptions.*
Me: Okay

Saturday:

Try to use it for a repeat prescription for the first time
System: You have no repeat prescriptions available.

Today:

Me: Hi, I tried to get a repeat prescription and it wouldn't have it.
Surgery: Ah, that's because it's a controlled drug and the system doesn't handle those.

It's the only bloody prescription I have! Talk about being as much use as a chocolate teapot!!

* That was the occasion when the receptionist took one look at my handwriting and decided to fill in the form for me.

Comments

[yhlee]

Ugh, stupidity bureaucracy. My sympathies. :(

[rmc28]

Aieeee. No write-in request option? My GP's system offers me my irregular-repeat sumatriptan or a write-in box. Admittedly I haven't had reason to try out the latter yet.

I will say that online appointment-booking for non-urgent stuff is really handy. I always seem to remember that kind of thing on the way home from work, or at bedtime, so at least I can log in and get it in the calendar. Annoyingly my GP's system doesn't have the nurse appointments in it, so things like blood tests, vaccination etc (which I also tend to forget about during office hours) I still have to ring up for.

[davidgillon]

From what they said it's a deliberate design decision not to handle controlled drugs (which for some reason they called 'acute prescriptions', while telling me that means controlled), and it's commercial software, I'm logging into a central site, not a surgery one, so potentially fairly standard across the country.

The appointment booking will be useful, particularly as they have appointments on it they don't make available otherwise, but I average about one appointment a year, versus 13 prescriptions!

[cesy]

Mine doesn't have write-in, either, so I can't do anything about the repeats that don't show on the system.

[jesse_the_k]

Infuriating electronic medical record software is one of my town's major industries. I'm so sorry you're having to deal with More Shit.