REPEAT MEDICINES

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 17, 15 October 1943, Page 4

REPEAT MEDICINES

Original Supply To Be Used First Amendments to the regulations covering Social Security (pharmaceutical benefits) yvere gazetted last night. Explaining the amendments, the Minister ot Health, Mr. INordmeyer, said that they were issued 1 with the object of discouraging chemists from supplying repeats called for by a medical prescription at the same time as the. original medicine was dispensed. -■ “As experience has shown that many repeats are frequently not required by patients, this expensive practice is one that is most undesirable, especially during the present time when drugs are difficult to obtain,” said the Minister, “lhe amendment provides that repeats may be dispensed at the cost of. the Social Security Fund only when it is reasonably assumed that tlie medicine previously supplied has (been exhausted or substantially exhausted. Allowance . has been made, however, for exceptional cases, and if, for instance, a person resides at. a considerable distance, from a chemist's shop and cannot obtain a repeat when it is required, that person may still obtain all the medicine Ordered, on a medical prescription with the original supply.” t It is now an oftence tfor a contracting chemist: (1) To require or accept from any person a receipt that does not. disclose the true date ou which the medicine yvas supplied; or (2) to supply' any medicine by way of a repeat, in terms of any medical prescription except in response to a specific request made by or on behalf of a patient; or (3) to claim payment for medicines he has not supplied in accordance with the regulations, or to furnish any false or misleading document in support of a claim for payment from tlie fund. Similarly, a person who gives a chemist a receipt for medicines he has not received or gives a receipt that does not disclose tho true date on which the medicine yvas supplied to him. is also liabla to.a.uanalbL.