An American expat has been shocked at how easy it is to pick up a medication prescription in Australia.
Natalie Carroll, who is originally from Seattle, has been Down Under for the last six weeks and has slowly been setting up her new life.
This has included trips to Kmart, setting up a bank account, getting an Aussie phone number and sorting out all her prescriptions that she would normally have back home.
But she told Yahoo Lifestyle she couldn’t believe how seamless the process is here compared to back home.
“Even just finding a doctor was very different,” Natalie said.
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“I think it’s a lot more accessible here. Just to be able to go online and find a GP… that shocked me.”
She said back in Seattle, you’d normally have to wait four to six months just for a regular checkup with a general practitioner.
Instead, she found appointments that were available for the very same day and the amount of choice was overwhelming.
But once she was given her prescriptions, getting them from her local pharmacy was even more mind-blowing.
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How do Australian pharmacies compare to the US?
In her home city, Natalie said some pharmacies wouldn’t fill prescriptions unless they were linked to your insurance provider.
It can also take days for your medication to arrive at the specific pharmacy.
Natalie admitted she had “split pills in half” back in the US because she had to wait for her prescriptions for so long.
But when she ducked into a Priceline store in Sydney, she was thrilled that it would only take five minutes for her medication to be in her hand.
She was stunned it took her just 10 minutes to get her prescriptions. Source: Getty/Instagram/@natcarroll_
“It was way easier. There wasn’t any line,” she said of her Aussie experience.
“Back home, I would literally carve out time in my work day to go get my prescription, and there’d still be a line of four people ahead of me.”
Natalie added that the woman who served her was incredibly helpful and talked her through the whole process.
The staffer explained how to claim the medications back through her private health insurance, and the difference between well-known brands and generic brands of medication.
While she praised the Aussie chemist system, she was surprised to receive a paper prescription from her GP.
Back home, the doctor sends the script to the pharmacy, and you only need to show up and pick up the medication.
While paper prescriptions have been the dominant way to get medicine in the past, electronic prescriptions are becoming increasingly popular.
They’re sent as a text message to your phone, and you only need to show the pharmacist the QR code to get your prescription.
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