We would like to thank you, as a valued patient of Brenchley and Horsmonden Surgeries, for using our dispensing service and to encourage you to continue to support us whenever possible.
Our in-house Dispensary at Brenchley is an important part of the service we can offer to patients. As a rural practice we are able to dispense medications to any patient who lives more than 1.6km (in a straight line) from their nearest pharmacy, including regular medications and acute prescriptions issued by the doctor at a consultation. You may recently have seen adverts or received details of NHS prescription delivery services. Whilst we cannot offer a delivery service we would very much encourage you to continue to use our Dispensary whenever possible, and remember that this is not dependent upon which Surgery you are registered with. There are patients registered at Horsmonden to whom we can dispense and patients at Brenchley to whom we cannot dispense, entirely down to the 1.6km rule.
As well as allowing us to offer dispensing services to eligible patients, the income generated from providing this service enables us to continue to run surgeries in both Brenchley and Horsmonden on a daily basis. Without our Dispensary unfortunately some of the services we are able to provide may need to be reduced or discontinued.
As you no doubt know, we offer the option of leaving your repeat medication requests at reception - and we have post boxes outside both surgeries so they can be left when we are closed - or you can register for online access which will enable you to order repeat medication and book your appointments with the doctors.
We often receive telephone calls for repeat medication requests; unfortunately this is something our receptionists are not able to do for safety reasons and we would appreciate your co-operation in not asking them to do this. If you do not have a repeat slip simply write on a piece of paper the medication you need, remember to put your name, date of birth and telephone number on it, and leave it with us in the usual way.
Brenchley Dispensary is open between 8.15am and 4pm on Monday and Tuesday and until 6.30pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (although arrangements can be made to post prescriptions to you if you are unable to collect between these times). We ask for 3 complete working days’ notice to fulfil your requests as this allows us to safely process the order, gives the doctors time to check each and every prescription they sign to ensure it is correct, enables the Dispensary to order any medications not kept in stock and to check and bag all items ready for collection. We don’t mind if you request your medications early – but urgent requests do put considerable strain on the day to day running in the Dispensary and your assistance in this regard is appreciated.
If you have any questions about the Dispensary, or if you would like to register to use the online services, please speak to one of our dispensers - Sue, Caroline, Jeanette and Nova – and they will be happy to help you.
We believe that by running our own Dispensary we offer an invaluable and popular facility which benefits our whole community and we very much hope that you will continue to support us, thus allowing us to maintain this and all our existing services.
With best wishes
Drs Ironmonger, Weighell, Harris & Le Rolland
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