NHS T prescription changes

[Kylo]

Anyone here using the NHS for T - have any of your doctors tried to reduce your dose without consulting you?

I'm on a repeat prescription indefinitely for T gel, I go to pick up my usual of 2 canisters and 3 doses daily roughly monthly from the pharmacy and find a different doctor who I have never visited before had altered my dosage and reduced it to 2 daily and 1 canister. This took place while my actual doctor was away on a 2 week break and I'm due to see her about my bloods in 3 days.

I'm not happy about this at all. No consultation, no discussion, nothing. I'll be talking to my actual doctor about this on the 7th for sure.

I did Google "doctor changed my prescription without telling me" and found a few results from NHS patients having doctors reduce their doses or switch them to cheaper meds without any sort of consultation. Then I find the NHS is trying to cut a few billion in costs as usual and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

For me, the reduction of my dose is supposed to be experimental and supposed to be based on my blood results AND my own reports of how much I'm using and its effects - here I got some doctor I don't know halving the original dose the GIC suggested. Hopefully my actual doctor will amend this when I see her.

For anyone else on NHS prescriptions, it's something to look out for. I guess at some point in future they'll be forcing us to go on shots so they can save money. 

[caliyr]

I use the NHS for T, but for injections.

In case you dont know, GPs can only prescribe you dosage for at most 3 months.

With that in mind, when I changed from one injections per 4 weeks (3x/3 months) to 3 weeks (4x/3months), all it took was a phone call to get my GP to prescribe me 4 injections instead of 3 on each prescription.

I understand you're unhappy about the situation and rightly so, but dont it might have been a mistake. A GP doesn't get extra pay for lowering doses and thus "cutting costs" for the NHS so don't think this was done because he wanted to save money for the NHS. He either made a bad decision consciously or made a mistake. Talk to your GP about it and I'm sure she'll be happy to help you with this.

[Kylo]

I did find out the reason.

Some other doctor I don't know and have never seen signed off the prescription, and he did it looking at the "female" categorization on my medical records.

Which is bizarre because if he was signing off a T prescription for a female and lowering it because he thought it was too high, he also didn't bother to read the patient medical history and see why it was being prescribed in the first place. He apparently saw the "F", and arbitrarily lowered the dose of his own accord without consulting anyone. A good thing I followed up on it with my own GP and got the dose put back up to normal. So this was apparently a mistake (at best) and it had to be rectified by me directly with my actual doctor. 

Nobody was able to give me a reason why this was done but I'm not surprised there