Please be aware, the Practice is not responsible for any requests for private weightloss medication. We will not provide any communication around this to third parties. It is the responsibility of the private provider to ensure the health of patients on this medication.
BMA Scotland Guidance to Practices : Practices are being contacted with requests from private providers asking Practices to undertake a review of patient’s notes to check that private providers are safe to prescribe Wegovy or Mounjaro. This, by default, means that the Practice takes responsibility for prescribing initiated by other organisations.
General Practice is under extreme pressure and is not able to take on unfunded, noncontractual work for outside providers. Due to the volume of work Practices are already dealing with there is no guarantee that even if this were being done that it would be done in the requested timescale.
Under GMC regulations it is the responsibility of the prescribing clinician to assure themselves that their prescribing is safe, ways of doing this would include taking an adequate history, examining the patient and doing and acting on any appropriate pre-prescribing investigations. Professional medication safety guidelines (NICE) require examination of the patient. This would seem to include objective and accurate weight measurement, at initial assessment and at regular review. At no point is it expected that the provider asks the patient’s NHS GP to do this private work on behalf of other organisations. Private providers must be aware that they cannot assume that a non-response is an agreement that there are no contraindications to prescribing this type of medication.
Should Practices wish to undertake this work, which is asking for a private opinion, they can levy an
appropriate fee, and may wish to refer to the fee calculator on the BMA website.