Repeat prescription without an appointment

What counts as a repeat prescription

A repeat is a renewal of treatment that is already running: the same active substance, the same strength, the same dosage, in a person whose condition is stable and whose monitoring is up to date. Typical examples are a long-standing blood pressure medicine, a statin, thyroid replacement, an inhaler for well-controlled asthma, a proton pump inhibitor or an antidepressant that has been working for months.

What is not a repeat is just as important. A new symptom is not a repeat. A first prescription of a medicine you have never taken is not a repeat. A dose increase is not a repeat, and neither is a new infection, even if you have had the same antibiotic before, because each infection is its own episode with its own assessment. If a request arrives dressed as a renewal but is actually one of these, the doctor declines and says so, because renewing on paper what has not been reviewed clinically is the failure mode this whole model has to avoid.

What information you need to have ready

Six things carry almost every renewal: the active substance rather than only a brand name, the strength, the pharmaceutical form, how you actually take it, how long you have been on it, and who prescribed it last. Add the date and result of any monitoring the medicine requires, along with a list of everything else you take, prescribed or not, including anything bought over the counter.

The fastest way to supply all of that is a photograph of your most recent prescription or of the dispensing label on the box, plus a photograph of any recent blood test result. Also state allergies, whether you are pregnant, trying to conceive or breastfeeding, and any change since the last prescription: new diagnoses, hospital admissions, new medicines started elsewhere. A questionnaire answered in three words is the single most common reason an assessment stalls, and a stalled assessment costs you time rather than saving it.

Which medicines can be renewed this way and which cannot

Ordinary long-term medicines for stable conditions are the core of it: antihypertensives, statins, levothyroxine, metformin, inhalers, proton pump inhibitors, allergy medicines, and antidepressants that are established and unchanged. Contraception you have already been using for some time also falls into this pattern, provided the risk factors have not changed.

Some groups are outside the route entirely and no questionnaire changes that. Opioid painkillers, benzodiazepines, Z-drugs for sleep, stimulants, gabapentinoids such as pregabalin and gabapentin, and medical cannabis are not prescribed by MEDINOW. Article 11(6) of Directive 2011/24/EU allows member states to keep narcotic and psychotropic medicines out of the cross-border prescription route, and Irish rules keep controlled drugs out of it as well. Separately, a medicine that is not authorised in Ireland cannot be dispensed by an Irish pharmacy whatever the prescription says, so the document is written using the international non-proprietary name in a strength and form available here.

When a review is needed instead of a renewal

A renewal is declined and a clinical review is requested whenever the safety of the next prescription depends on something the questionnaire cannot supply. In practice that means out-of-date monitoring, new symptoms, a dose that has been changing, a medicine that requires physical examination or a test before each cycle of prescribing, or a long gap since anybody has looked at the treatment as a whole.

Common triggers include kidney function and electrolytes for ACE inhibitors, ARBs and diuretics, thyroid function for levothyroxine, blood pressure readings for antihypertensives, liver and lipid results for statins, and blood pressure and migraine history for combined hormonal contraception. Age changes some of these thresholds, and so does pregnancy. A refusal in these situations is not the service being awkward; it is the point at which continuing without new information stops being safe, and the correct next step is your GP rather than a different website.

How the prescription reaches you and what to bring to the pharmacy

The prescription is issued as a PDF carrying the fields set out in the Annex to Directive 2012/52/EU, including your name and date of birth, the date, the prescriber's name, qualification, work address with the country, an email address and a telephone number with an international dialling code, a handwritten signature, and the medicine by international non-proprietary name with strength, form, quantity and dosage. It is sent to the email address you gave us.

You then go to a pharmacy of your choice with the document and photo identification, because the pharmacist has to match you to the name on it. There is no PIN code and no national patient number in this route. Many pharmacists prefer a printed copy, so print it before you go. The Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland publishes guidance for pharmacists on prescriptions from EU and EEA prescribers, but it obliges nobody: the pharmacist keeps professional judgement and may decline. We do not name or link any particular pharmacy.

What it costs, and when the fee is refunded

A repeat prescription assessment costs 19.90 euro. That is a single charge for the medical assessment, with no subscription, and the price of the medicine is set by the dispensing pharmacy and is separate.

The fee covers the medical assessment itself, not the issuing of a document. If the doctor declines on medical grounds, the fee is refunded. If you do not send the documentation the doctor asks for, the assessment counts as carried out and the fee is not refunded. That second half is the part worth reading twice: the doctor's work happens when your answers are read, so an assessment that ends in a request you ignore has still been done. We do not publish a turnaround time, because it depends on the doctor's queue and on whether the history is complete, and a number we could not stand over would be worse than no number. Start the assessment while you still have medicine left.

What this service is not

It is not an emergency service, not a diagnosis service, and not a way around treatment your own doctor has stopped or refused. It does not issue sick certificates for employers, it does not support Illness Benefit claims, and it does not prescribe controlled drugs. There is no video consultation, no phone appointment and no live chat, and if what you need is a conversation with a clinician, this is not the right product.

It is also not a replacement for a GP. Registering with a practice matters for continuity: somebody has to hold the whole record, arrange the blood tests, examine you when something new appears and manage the long-term plan. A renewal service is useful in the gaps around that, when the treatment is settled and the supply is the problem. If you find yourself using it repeatedly to avoid a review that is overdue, the review is what you actually need.

Who wrote this page

This page was 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. Reviewed on 29 August 2026.

The page is general information about how renewal of treatment works and what a prescriber needs to see. It is not a diagnosis and does not replace an assessment by your own GP, who holds the record this page keeps referring back to.

How this page was put together: the medicines, categories and rules described here were checked against the sources listed below rather than written from memory, and any figure we could not verify at source was left out instead of estimated. Where Irish practice differs from the rules of another country, the Irish position is the one stated on this page, and the Irish regulators named here are the HPRA for medicines, the HSE for health services, the PSI for pharmacy and the Irish Medical Council for doctors practising in Ireland. Corrections are welcome by email and are made to the page rather than argued about.