Most people in Malta meet the private prescription system for the first time at the counter, holding a piece of paper and hoping it is the right one. The mechanics are rarely explained anywhere, which is why the same handful of questions turn up in every pharmacy queue on the island.
This is how it actually works, in the order you will meet it.
What is a private prescription?
It is an instruction from a doctor to a pharmacist, authorising the pharmacist to dispense a specific medicine to a specific person. "Private" means only that it sits outside the public formulary: you buy the medicine yourself rather than receiving it through the government scheme. Clinically it is the same document, written to the same standard, by a doctor under the same professional obligations.
Malta, like every EU country, divides medicines into those a pharmacist may sell you across the counter and those that require a prescription. The second group requires one because the decision to take it needs a clinician who knows your history, what else you take and what else might be going on. That is the whole reason the category exists, and it is why no legitimate service can hand you a prescription without a doctor in the middle of it.
Who can write one in Malta?
A doctor registered with the Medical Council of Malta, which is the body that licenses doctors to practise here. Dentists prescribe within dentistry, and certain other professions have narrow prescribing rights, but for the ordinary case it is a registered doctor.
This is worth checking before you pay anyone, particularly online. A prescription written by a doctor registered in another country is not automatically dispensable at a Maltese pharmacy, and people discover that at the counter rather than at the point of payment. Every consultation at Carisma Medical is with a Malta-registered doctor, for exactly this reason.
Does the prescription go to me or to a pharmacy?
It goes to you. That is the ordinary arrangement and it is the one used here: after the consultation, if the doctor decides treatment is appropriate, the prescription is sent to you, and you take it to whichever pharmacy in Malta or Gozo you want.
Be wary of any arrangement where a clinic sends the prescription straight to a pharmacy of its choosing without asking you, particularly if the two are connected. You should be free to use the pharmacy on your corner, the one that already holds your record, or the one that happens to be open. A clinic that does not sell medicines and takes nothing from any pharmacy has no reason to mind which you pick, and no reason to steer you.
What does it cost?
Two separate payments, to two separate businesses, and keeping them separate is the only way to understand what you are being charged for.
- The doctor. A consultation at Carisma Medical is €59, and the online assessment before it is free. Where care continues month to month, that is €29 a month and it begins only after you have been seen. Both figures include any tax. Full detail is on the pricing page.
- The pharmacy. If the doctor prescribes, the medicine is a separate purchase. Collect at any pharmacy in Malta or Gozo. You pay the pharmacy directly, at its own price. We never sell or ship medicine. Prices vary between pharmacies and you are free to ask more than one.
The consultation fee is for the doctor’s time and judgement, and it is charged whether or not the answer is a prescription. That is not a technicality: a service that only charged when it said yes would have an obvious commercial reason never to say no, and the value of a clinical opinion is precisely that it can go either way.
How long does a prescription last, and what about repeats?
A prescription authorises a defined quantity, and once that is dispensed it is finished. How much is written for is a clinical decision that depends on the medicine, on how long you have been taking it and on when you should next be reviewed. It is not something a patient chooses at the counter and not something a website should promise in advance.
Where treatment continues, so does the review. That is what ongoing care is for: a doctor looking at how you are actually getting on before deciding whether to continue, adjust or stop. Renewals that arrive automatically with nobody reading anything are not care, whatever they are called.
What will a doctor not prescribe at a first online consultation?
Several things, and the list is not a Carisma policy. Some medicines are controlled and carry specific requirements about how and by whom they may be initiated. Some need a physical examination or a test result before anyone can responsibly start them. Some need a specialist rather than a general assessment. And some situations call for the opposite of a prescription: a referral, a scan, or simply a doctor saying that what you have described does not need treating.
Is any of this on my record, and who finds out?
Your consultation and the decision that follows it are health data, protected under EU law and under a doctor’s professional secrecy. They are not sent to your employer, your insurer, your family or your usual doctor unless you ask for that. If you would like your GP to have a copy, say so and it will be sent. If you would rather nobody had it, nothing is sent.
At the pharmacy you are collecting a prescription like anybody else collecting a prescription. On this island that matters more than it does elsewhere, which is the honest reason a lot of people use a service like an online doctor at all.