This is an arrangement between you, your specialist and your GP to allow your surgery to take over prescribing your ADHD medication once you are stable. It is a set of rules to ensure your health is managed safely. Your specialist remains responsible for monitoring your condition. The specialist would manage any changes in medication that you need.
Your specialist will diagnose your ADHD, start treatment, manage side effects and make sure your treatment is working well. They will write to the surgery to request that we issue prescriptions under shared care.
Your GP surgery will issue prescriptions, following the 'shared care agreement' and will contact your specialist if there are any concerns.
You (the patient or parent/guardian) should
- take the medicine as directed
- go to specialist appointments at least annually
- complete any requests for your weight, blood pressure and pulse
Sometimes your GP may not feel happy to agree to take over the prescription responsibilities and will decline this request. This may include not having enough information from the specialist or being concerned that the prescribing is unusual.
We would expect you to have been on the same dose for at least 3 months and have been reviewed on this dose by your specialist before a shared care request is considered.
If your specialist has not reviewed you recently or there are concerns that you are not being well managed or you do not complete an annual medication review with your GP then your GP may stop issuing prescriptions for you. Your specialist provider will need to be contacted to take over issuing prescriptions if this happens.
Whilst this can be frustrating for you in terms of convenience and sometimes cost, our first concern is to make sure you are getting safe care.
Please note: we do not accept private referral prescribing requests for under 18 year olds.