Saturday 26 November 2011

Cross border prescriptions

Time of winter holidays is coming soon. Have you ever wondered what happens if you want to buy your medicines when you have flu skiing... Commission decided: it is time to know what you think. Thus consultation on "Measures for Improving the recognition of prescriptions issued in another Member State" is in full swing.

Consultation period started on 28 October 2011 and Commission would like to end it by 8 January 2012. As all patients and health professionals prescribing medicinal products or medical devices belong to target groups, everybody may take part (online questionnaire).

It all started with the Directive 2011/24 which requires that the Commission adopts the measures enabling a health professional to verify the authenticity of the prescription and whether the prescription was issued in another Member State by a member of a regulated health profession who is legally entitled to do so (in other words something like “standard format”). What is worth mentioning, prescriptions would include e.g. elements to enable contact between the prescribing party and the dispensing party in order to understand the treatment.

Stakeholder input will feed into the impact assessment as announced on the European Commission's impact assessment webpage