Anschlussversorgung

Anschlussversorgung is the case in which a pharmacy continues a medication a person is already on, without a current prescription in front of it. It is set out in paragraph 48a AMG and it has been in force since 2 July 2026, the date the ApoVWG took effect. Of the two branches of Rx-Abgabe ohne Rezept, this is the one a pharmacy can actually work with today.

The conditions are narrow and they are the whole point of the rule:

• The medicine has to have been prescribed for that person across at least three quarters, which is the law's way of establishing that the therapy is genuinely running instead of new.
• Only the smallest available pack size may be handed out, which limits the supply instead of replacing a consultation.
• It is not repeatable, because a second continuation is not available on the strength of the first one, and the person needs a new prescription before the next pack.
• Categories of medicine are excluded as well, including those that require monitoring and those with a high potential for abuse. Between them those exclusions remove a good deal of what a pharmacy might have assumed was covered.

What the statute does not settle is the working detail, and all of it comes from the guidance published by the ABDA and by the Landesapothekerkammer instead of from the paragraph:

• Who in the team may make the decision is not stated in the paragraph.
• How the three quarters are established, and from which record they are read, is left open.
• What has to be written down at the moment of handover comes from the guidance.
• How long that documentation is kept comes from the same place.
• What the pharmacy has to be able to produce if it is asked later is also left to the guidance.

A pharmacy that intends to use the rule should have that guidance in the house before the first case instead of after it.

It is worth being clear about what Anschlussversorgung is not, because it is a dispensing rule instead of a pharmazeutische Dienstleistung, and it is not the acute case. The acute case is the separate and not yet operable Akutversorgung. Whether the pharmacy is paid for it, and on what terms, is not something the statute text answers, so that question belongs with the same guidance and with the pharmacy's own Verband.