Emergency Contraception Available to Medical Card Patients at No Cost

 

The Minister for health and the IPU have come to a progressive arrangement whereby GMS patients from the 1st of July 2017 will be able to access emergency contraception from community pharmacists without first having to attend their GP to get a prescription or paying privately for it.

 

Only two products will be reimbursable under this scheme

• Prevenelle 1500mcg @ €6.81
• EllaOne 30mg tablet @ €16.44

Pharmacists will be paid a consultation fee of €11.50 whether they supply EHC or not.

If a product is dispensed the pharmacist will be paid a dispensing fee + ingredient cost + Consultation fee.

If no product is dispensed the pharmacist will only be a paid a consultation fee.

EHC Consultation Fee PCRS Code – Product Supplied : 79996

EHC Consultation Fee PCRS Code – Product Not Supplied : 79997

The patient will also be exempt from paying the €2.50 charge with is usually paid by the GMS patients.

 

How to Claim

 

You will need to have the patient’s medical card on file or get the patient to present  the card to you as you would need to claim using your computer system.

 

You will also need to create a new prescriber on your dispensing system. This prescriber will be your Pharmacy and you must include your Pharmacy Contractor Number (5 digit number) in the field usually reserved for the  5 digit GMS Doctor Code , as this will be needed in order to claim .

 

You will record the consultation on the patient’s patient medication record on your computer under the GMS scheme. You will select the product that applies either 79996 or 79997. You will then have to select the product you dispensed , so if it is EllaOne or Prevenelle .

 

You will then have to Print a unified claim form , your computer may not always prompt this , as usually on GMS scripts you do not need to print them , so you may have to manually prompt the computer to do this.

 

Once the form is printed , the patient must sign at the bottom right line to acknowledge they received the service.

 

You the pharmacist will also have to sign the declaration that you delivered the service to the named patient similar to the High Tech Scheme . “I confirm that I have counselled the patient and provided the service and/or the product listed in compliance with the relevant protocol”

 

The Signed form is then sent along the with the regular GMS scripts at the end of the month to the PCRS for payment.

 

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