What a cross-border prescription must contain

Which rules apply, and to what

Two pieces of European law sit behind this. Directive 2011/24/EU on patients' rights in cross-border healthcare establishes that a prescription issued in one member state should be capable of being dispensed in another. Commission Implementing Directive 2012/52/EU then sets out the practical measures, and its Annex contains the list of details a prescription must carry for that purpose.

The rules apply to a prescription issued at the request of a patient who intends to use it in a different member state from the one where it was written. They do not turn every prescription into an international document by default, and they do not oblige a pharmacist to dispense something they judge unsafe or cannot supply.

What the framework does is remove the excuse of unfamiliarity. A pharmacist who receives a prescription written in another member state and containing the listed details has a document they can read and verify, rather than a piece of paper of unknown provenance.

Everything else, including the validity period, the pharmacy's own professional obligations, and how a substitution is handled, is governed by the law of the country where the prescription is dispensed. In Ireland that means the Irish rules apply at the counter.

Identification of the patient

The Annex requires the patient's surname or surnames, first name or first names written out in full rather than as initials, and date of birth.

The reason initials are excluded is that the pharmacist is dispensing to a person, not to a record. In a cross-border transaction there is no national patient number to check against, no shared prescription database and no local record. The name and date of birth on the document, matched against photo identification in the patient's own hand, is the whole of the identity check.

That has a practical consequence worth stating plainly. Bring identification. A passport or a driving licence in exactly the name printed on the prescription is what makes the transaction work, and a mismatch between a shortened name on one document and a full name on the other is the kind of small discrepancy that stops a dispensing.

There is no PIN code involved and no national health identifier. Those belong to national e-prescribing systems, which are internal to each country. A cross-border document identifies you by name and date of birth because that is what a pharmacist in another country can actually verify.

Authentication of the prescription

The Annex requires the date of issue. That single date does more work than it looks.

It anchors the prescription in time, which is what the receiving country's validity rules are applied to. A prescription cannot be assessed against a six month window, or any other window, without it.

It also tells the pharmacist how recent the underlying clinical decision was. A document dated last week and a document dated eight months ago describe very different levels of confidence that the prescriber's judgement still holds.

And it is the thing that cannot honestly be adjusted. The date of issue is the date the prescriber made the decision and signed. Writing an earlier date to extend usefulness, or a later one to make a document look fresher, misrepresents when a doctor assessed a patient, and it is not something any legitimate service will do for you.

Identification of the prescribing health professional

This is the longest part of the list and the part most often incomplete on documents people bring to a pharmacy.

The Annex requires the prescriber's surname or surnames and first name or first names written out in full, their professional qualification, direct contact details including email and a telephone or fax number with the international dialling prefix, their work address including the name of the member state, and a signature, which may be written or digital depending on the medium in which the prescription is issued.

Every element there has a purpose. The qualification tells the pharmacist what kind of prescriber this is. The direct contact details exist so that a pharmacist with a question can actually reach the prescriber rather than a switchboard, which is the mechanism that makes the whole arrangement workable. The member state tells the pharmacist which register to look at. The signature is the doctor taking responsibility for the decision.

On our documents this block names lek. Damian Wojno, a doctor registered in Poland, PWZ no. 3211301, with the Polish work address and direct contact route. He is not on the Irish Medical Council register, and the document does not claim otherwise. Under the cross-border framework, a prescription from a doctor registered in Poland is what it says it is, and honesty about which register the prescriber sits on is part of what makes it verifiable.

Identification of the prescribed product

The Annex requires the common name of the medicine, meaning the international non-proprietary name of the active substance. Brand names are used only where the product is a biological medicinal product, or where the prescriber considers a specific brand medically necessary, in which case a short statement of the reasons has to accompany it.

Alongside the name the prescription must state the pharmaceutical form, meaning tablet, capsule, solution and so on, the quantity, the strength, and the dosage regimen.

The reason for naming the active substance is entirely practical. Brand names differ between countries. The same active substance is marketed under one name in Poland, another in Ireland and a third in Spain, and a pharmacist handed only a foreign brand name may not be able to work out what is meant. The international non-proprietary name is the one term that means the same thing in every EU pharmacy.

The direct consequence for the patient is substitution. A pharmacist in Ireland will normally supply the equivalent Irish product for the substance named. The box will not match the one you are used to. That is the system working as designed, not an error, and if you are unsure the pharmacist will confirm that the substance and strength are the same.

What is excluded from the cross-border route

The recognition arrangements do not cover everything. Article 11(6) of Directive 2011/24/EU excludes medicinal products subject to special medical prescription, which is the category that covers controlled substances.

In plain terms that removes opioid painkillers, benzodiazepines, Z-drugs used for sleep, stimulants used in attention deficit disorders and cannabis-based products from this route altogether. MEDINOW does not issue prescriptions for any of them, and no wording on a document changes what the directive excludes.

We also do not prescribe gabapentinoids, meaning pregabalin and gabapentin. That is our own rule rather than a directive requirement, and it applies on every market we operate in.

Beyond the legal exclusions there is a practical one. A medicine that is not marketed in Ireland cannot be dispensed here just because it is named correctly, and a pharmacist cannot manufacture an equivalent that does not exist on the Irish market.

If your treatment falls into any of these groups, the working route is a prescriber in Ireland. Saying so costs us a sale and saves you a wasted trip to a pharmacy counter, which is the better trade.

What a pharmacist actually does with the document

The check runs roughly in this order. Are the required details present and legible. Does the patient in front of me match the patient named on it, on photo identification. Is the prescriber identifiable and contactable. Is the medicine one I can supply, in a form and strength marketed here. Is dispensing it appropriate for this person given what I can see and what they tell me.

That last question is the one people underestimate. A prescription is a request to dispense rather than an instruction, and a pharmacist in Ireland exercises independent professional judgement, regulated by the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland. They may ask you questions. They may contact the prescriber. They may decline.

A declined dispensing is not proof that the document was defective. It can mean the product is unavailable, or that the pharmacist wants to speak to the prescriber first, or that something you have told them has raised a concern. You are free to present the document at another pharmacy, and we do not name or recommend particular pharmacies.

The honest summary is that this framework guarantees a document that can be read and verified anywhere in the European Union. It does not guarantee that any given pharmacist will dispense it, and no service that tells you otherwise is describing the system accurately.

How our document is built to that list

Where lek. Damian Wojno issues a prescription after reading your questionnaire, the document is generated as a PDF laid out to the Annex described above and sent to you by email. It contains your full name and date of birth, the date of issue, the full prescriber identification block including qualification, direct contact details, Polish work address and member state, a signature, and the medicine named by its international non-proprietary name with the form, strength, quantity and dosage regimen.

You print it or present it on screen at any pharmacy, with photo identification in your own name.

The assessment behind it is written. You complete a medical questionnaire, the doctor reads it in his own time, and he either issues the document or declines and explains why. There is no video consultation, no telephone appointment and no live chat, and we make no promise about how long the review takes.

The two assessments we currently offer are a repeat prescription review at 19.90 euro for treatment you are already established on, and a weight management assessment at 29.90 euro. In both cases the fee covers the medical assessment and not the issuing of a document. If the doctor declines on medical grounds, the fee is refunded. If the doctor asks you for documentation and you do not send it, the assessment counts as carried out and the fee is not refunded.

Who wrote this page

Written by the MEDINOW editorial team and reviewed by lek. Damian Wojno, a doctor registered in Poland, PWZ no. 3211301. He is not on the Irish Medical Council register and does not hold an Irish practice address, which is the reason this page is explicit about which register the prescriber sits on and what that does and does not mean at an Irish pharmacy counter. Reviewed on 29 August 2026.

The list of required details on this page is taken from the Annex to Commission Implementing Directive 2012/52/EU, and the exclusion of medicines subject to special medical prescription is Article 11(6) of Directive 2011/24/EU. Both texts are linked below and both are short enough to read in full.

Where national rules apply on top of the European framework, this page says that the law of the country of dispensing governs, and points to the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland for the Irish position, rather than quoting national provisions from memory.