[Discussion] pharmacy is doing more work than we give it credit for
pharmacy is doing more work than we give it credit for, which sounds obvious until you try to state the evidence for it.
In England, specialist weight management services are commissioned locally, so eligibility criteria and waiting times differ by ICB. There is no single national threshold to quote.
Discharge from a specialist service at goal is a normal end point of that pathway. Whether prescribing continues in primary care afterwards is a local decision and is worth asking about at the start rather than at the end.
Supply notices from the regulator describe expected availability at a national level. They do not predict what any individual pharmacy has on the shelf next week.
If somebody has the same thing measured a different way, post it next to mine and we will see whether they agree.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Why the monthly pricing tracker works, and the rule that makes it work.
Members post the pharmacy, the product, the month and the price they actually paid — not an advertised offer, not a first-month discount. No links of any kind are permitted, which removes the entire incentive to post anything other than what happened.
The result is that the spread between pharmacies in a given month is visible, and it is consistently larger than people expect. That single table has saved members here more money than every other thread on the board combined, and it survives only because the no-links rule is enforced without exception.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements. An answer that begins with "in England" should say so, and most of the confusion here comes from answers that do not.
the Irish scheme cap is the single most useful fact in this board
Two years and four months on a tier 3 list. Referral date and every letter kept, which turned out to matter when the service reorganised.
ask the pharmacy for the price list, not the headline offer
BMI thresholds vary by ICB and by year
Did the consultation ask about history and medication?
Pharmacy pricing on a private prescription is set by the pharmacy. The spread between them in a given month is routinely substantial, which is why a tracker built from member reports is more useful than any headline.
GP said no and specialist said yes is a very common sequence
That is the first-month offer price, not the ongoing monthly cost. The tracker records the second one.
Agreed on keeping letters. Dates are what make an appeal or a re-referral possible.
Disagree. That is the pathway in one ICB and it does not generalise even to the next one over.
Disagree.
teodor_duarte is right that the two routes are separate. A private prescription does not move you up the list.
NHS pathway or private prescription?
Yes — four nations, four pathways, and threads that ignore that give people the wrong answer confidently.
the price difference between pharmacies this month is genuinely large
Concentrations can differ between products and between pharmacies. Switching mid-titration means redoing the arithmetic rather than carrying the old unit count across.
Same. My ICB threshold was different from the neighbouring one and nobody could tell me why.
Concentrations can differ between products and between pharmacies.
Adding the practical bit — ask what happens at discharge before you start, not after.
private and NHS pathways are not a ladder, they are separate routes
A private prescription is an independent route: it does not affect NHS list position, and it is not a step in the same pathway.
Referral link removed and the post left up. No links of any kind here, and that rule is not negotiable.
an online consultation that asks you nothing is not a consultation
- 1Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements. An answer…11 comments in this branch · started by u/bence_ibarra
- 2the price difference between pharmacies this month is genuinely large8 comments in this branch · started by u/solene_ilunga