Last day for getting a Fiasp prescription

Friday the 31st of March is the last day you can get an Australian doctor to write a Fiasp script, which hopefully we can then get dispensed at PBS price up until the 1st of October 2023. I outlined this earlier this month in “A reprieve for Fiasp“. At least, that’s the current situation. Everyone’s hoping that some resolution happens before October so that we can keep access to fast insulins.

Current supply issues?

Meanwhile, I was at a pharmacy today and was told they had no stock. That it was showing up as out of stock at their wholesale distributor. There were a few boxes available at another store half an hour’s drive away, but that was all they could see on their system. Of course, there’s more than one wholesaler (used by different pharmacy chains) so this doesn’t mean there’s none in the country.

Experience with other products says that there could still be stock available through different wholesalers. Maybe this wholesaler is just waiting on its latest delivery from Novo. But it may be a sign that something’s going on.
Fiasp has not yet shown up on the TGA’s database of medicine shortages. Hopefully the hiccup is resolved before it gets that far.

Update 2023-03-31: Indeed a different pharmacy chain has indicated they do have access to stock.

The initial announcement a month ago was that Fiasp would not be available through PBS scripts from April, until the Government issued Novo with a Supply Order requiring them to supply it for another 6 months. So I’m not surprised if there are some hiccups in supply at this point.

Novo had announced it would continue to be available on private prescription, so it seems they expected to be maintaining ongoing stock. Maybe there’s been a rush on it once the word got out that it was threatened? Hopefully people haven’t been stockpiling and depriving others.

It’s not just Fiasp though

There are lots of medications in short supply across the country. It’s been that way for a while. Some (Ozempic and Trulicity) have been fairly high profile, but they are just the tip of the iceberg.

We do always need to be keeping an eye on how much insulin we have in the fridge, and not leaving refills to the last minute. Hopefully no-one gets caught out in this Fiasp shortage. Hopefully it’s just a momentary hiccup in supply and will be resolved soon.

But at least if we have a valid script then we should have the option of getting it filled at some point over the coming months.

Is your script up to date?

Prescriptions are valid for 12 months (other than the constraint of that October cut-off for Fiasp).

If I didn’t have an up-to-date prescription at this point I would be on the phone to my clinic ASAP to get them to write the script immediately. I wouldn’t need it in my hands tomorrow, but it needs to have been written and dated before the end of March.