What happens when the pharmacy cannot supply your prescription?

It means the pharmacy cannot obtain the product named on your prescription at the moment. The notice does not cancel your prescription or the TGA approval behind it. If it gives no date for new stock, ask the pharmacy whether one is known and whether your prescriber has been told. This is general information, not medical or legal advice.

A pharmacist cannot do that for a Schedule 8 prescription without your prescriber. The TGA’s Serious Scarcity Substitution Instruments let community pharmacists substitute specific medicines during a shortage, and the TGA states it cannot make one for a controlled drug containing a Schedule 8 substance. Victoria makes it an offence to supply contrary to the instructions on a prescription outside exceptional circumstances, and Western Australia’s guidance says the prescriber needs to supply a new prescription for an alternative product.

It depends on how far the replacement differs from what the approved application described. A Category B application sets out the active ingredient, strength and dosage form, and a standard condition of approval is that the medicine is used only in the manner described in the application. Your Clinician reads the replacement against the approval letter. If it falls outside, they apply again, and the TGA states that applications are processed in 2 to 5 days.

Your clinic tells you once your Clinician has decided. The answer will be that the pharmacy has a date for new stock and the plan is to wait, that your Clinician has written a new prescription for a replacement, or that your Clinician wants to speak with you before changing anything. If you have heard nothing and your supply is getting short, contact the clinic and quote the date of the notice.

Tell your clinic the date of the notice, the product it names and how many days of medicine you have left. Whether to space out what you have, pause or stop is a clinical question, so put it to your Clinician and follow what they tell you. The TGA’s advice to patients during any shortage is to speak to their prescriber or pharmacist, and the TGA does not give clinical advice itself.

A change may need a review consultation if your Clinician has to assess you before prescribing something different. LeafLine’s fees page lists $69 for a 20-minute repeat consultation and $59 for a shorter one. Ask the clinic whether your change needs a consultation before you book. The pharmacy sets the price of the medicine itself.

You are unlikely to find it there. The TGA’s medicine shortage reports database covers reportable medicines, which the TGA lists as registered Schedule 4 and Schedule 8 medicines and certain non-prescription medicines. An unapproved medicine is one that is not in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. The TGA also leaves local supply disruptions, where one pharmacy or area has run out, off the database. Your pharmacy and clinic are the better sources.

That depends on whether another pharmacy can obtain the product, so ask your clinic before you try. A pharmacy can dispense an unapproved medicine only if its supplier provides it, and the TGA places responsibility for sourcing the product on the prescriber, working with the dispensing pharmacy. Your clinic can find out what is obtainable and where.

The supplier has no such duty. The TGA states that sponsors are under no obligation to supply an unapproved therapeutic good, and that an inability to source the product may require a change to the patient’s treatment. A product can be withdrawn while your approval is still current, which is why an approval letter does not guarantee stock.

A Category B approval runs for the period on the approval letter, and waiting for stock does not extend it. Tell your clinic if the date on your letter falls within the next month, so your Clinician can deal with the renewal and the stock problem together.