Care Opinion

Text size

Theme

Language

Help with language translation
Help with reading or listening

Pharmacy

Posted By CF Fridges

"Pharmacy"

About: Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital

(as the patient),

I ordered medications from the hospital pharmacy. Staff who are always helpful advise me that because I have moved to Perth I cannot store my prescriptions at Pharmacy and need to present these each time I need a script. This is extremely time-consuming and not a good system, in my opinion, especially if you’re unwell and you need to drop your script off and wait around for at least an hour if not longer.

Surely scripts can be kept at Pharmacy and a phone call can administer this to be made like normal Pharmacist do in the community; it’s a simple solution to help navigate a chronic health issue and obtain scripts and cut down on waiting times. Life with a chronic illness is already hard enough let alone having to spend more time in a hospital system when there is an easy solution to navigate this and keep the scripts at the pharmacy for ready ease of being made up when necessary. 

Can I also add, that each time a patient comes in to collect their medication, They also have to pay for parking which is rather costly waiting for hour or more for a script to be made up is going to be very costly and not adequate 

More about:
Do you have a similar story to tell? Tell your story & make a difference ››

Responses

Response from Renee De Prazer, A/Executive Director, SCGOPHCG, North Metropolitan Health Service 3 weeks ago
Renee De Prazer
A/Executive Director, SCGOPHCG,
North Metropolitan Health Service

Submitted on 3/06/2026 at 11:51 AM
Published on Care Opinion Australia at 1:10 PM

Dear CF Fridges,

Thank you for your feedback regarding the Outpatient Pharmacy at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. We acknowledge the challenges you have described and understand how managing a chronic condition can make accessing medications more difficult. We are sorry for the frustration this experience has caused.

Hospital outpatient pharmacies operate under specific legislative and clinical governance requirements that differ from community pharmacies.

Prescriptions must therefore be presented in person for each dispensing episode and cannot be retained on site and this process is consistent across WA Health hospitals. These requirements are in place to ensure prescription validity, patient safety, and compliance with hospital policy, although we recognise this can be inconvenient.

Waiting times may also be longer than in community pharmacies due to the complexity of hospital‑supplied medications, which often require additional clinical checks or specialist approvals. We acknowledge the added impact of parking costs during these wait periods.

To help minimise time spent onsite, patients may request an SMS notification once medications are ready for collection. Where suitable, patients may also use the Hospital Smart Locker service, allowing medication collection between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm, seven days a week. While not suitable for all medications (such as those requiring refrigeration), pharmacy staff can advise if this option is appropriate.

We appreciate your feedback, which has been shared with pharmacy leadership to support ongoing service improvement.

Kind regards,

Renee de Prazer

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful
Opinions
Next Response j
Previous Response k