Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Act 2013

7.

Scenario 1 — retail pharmacy business has in stock branded product named on prescription and one substitute medicinal product of lower cost.

7.— (1) Subsection (2) shall apply where a pharmacist who is working in a retail pharmacy business is presented with a prescription, by the patient for whom the prescription was issued or a person acting on behalf of the patient, for a branded interchangeable medicinal product which is not the subject of a clinical exemption and, at the time the prescription is presented, the retail pharmacy business has in stock the branded product and only one substitute medicinal product which is of lower cost to the Executive (as specified in the Reimbursement List) or the patient, as the case may be, than the branded product.

(2) The pharmacist shall offer the patient, or the person acting on behalf of the patient, as the case may be, the opportunity to agree to the pharmacist substituting the branded product with the substitute medicinal product.

(3) Where the patient, or the person acting on behalf of the patient, to whom an offer referred to in subsection (2) is made by a pharmacist agrees to the substitution the subject of the offer, the pharmacist shall effect the substitution.