Fair Deal/Nursing Homes Drugs payment scheme with a family member in a nursing home

[notthatkeen]

My father is in a nursing home and my mother lives at home. She is attempting to get them both set up on the drugs payment scheme but is running into trouble because they don't share a pharmacist (his medications come through some warehouse pharmacy used by the nursing home, hers from the local pharmacy).
She has been told that the only way to get this to work is to request refunds from the drugs payment scheme, and that to do this she must get the fully itemized paper receipts from the nursing home pharmacy. They in turn have told her she must call them every time she needs the receipts because they don't have the facility to post them out on a schedule.
This is all a lot of hassle and I'm hoping someone has found a smoother process since the situation must be common.

 

[Sue Ellen]

Is there an option to turn its on its head and let the Drug Payment card be used by the nursing home and let your mother claim for her prescriptions? This would make it easier for her to get the receipts directly from her own pharmacy to make the claim.

The whole system does seem like something from the dark ages, unnecessarily complicated.

 

[Des Pondent]

This is all a lot of hassle and I'm hoping someone has found a smoother process since the situation must be common.

If you have to use 2 chemists, I am not aware of an easier way.

You can use your drug payment card in any number of chemists and none will charge you any more once you go over €80 in that chemist. The problem is chemist A does not know that you have already spent €70 that month in chemist B and will look for payment until you hit the €80 in chemist A. You then have submit all the receipts, and will be refunded what you as a family spent over €80.

One way around it would be for your mother to use the same chemist as the nursing home, that way once the pair of you hit €80 you should pay no more, and there would be no collecting receipts and form filling for refunds.

It is an antiquated and daft system as it stands, you can download the forms on line but you cannot submit online. Forms have to be filled in with lots of repetitive PPS numbers, chemist numbers, drug payment card numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses, then post the lot. If you didn't make any mistakes, you will get a cheque in the post about 5 weeks later for most of what you spent over €80.