Amendment to the definition of Specialist recommendation in the General rules

Medicines Decision

PHARMAC wishes to announce that the guidance on how the words “As recommended by a Specialist” in Part I of Section A: General Rules will be amended from 1 April 2013 to include practitioners who have prescribed in accordance with DHB hospital approved protocols (details below).

Following notification of decisions regarding restrictions applying to the many anti-infectives to be included on the hospital medicines list [PDF, 142 KB] we became aware that the ability for Hospital based specialists to initiate treatment under a protocol in a hospital and continue in the community would not be allowed. This change to the rules will allow clinicians to initiate or continue therapy in the community if initiation of the therapy is or was according to a DHB hospital approved protocol.

Because more time is required to enable Software vendors and Sector Services to make technical changes to implement this alteration and to inform DHB clinicians of the requirements for annotation on prescriptions, until 1 July 2013 pharmacists should consider any prescription endorsed with a ‘recommended by Specialist’, if the Specialist is not a one of the named prescribers set out in the Schedule rules, to have been initiated as per a DHB hospital approved protocol.