Rx-Abgabe ohne Rezept

Rx-Abgabe ohne Rezept is not a single permission but the umbrella term for a small number of cases in which no valid prescription is in front of the person handing the medicine over. Two separate rules belong under the term, both were written into the Arzneimittelgesetz in the same reform, but they took effect on different timetables:

1. Anschlussversorgung under paragraph 48a AMG covers the continuation of a chronic medication the person is already taking, and it has been in force since 2 July 2026.
2. Akutversorgung under paragraph 48b AMG covers supply in an acute situation, but the mechanism behind it is not yet operable.

Anschlussversorgung became usable on the day the ApoVWG took effect, so a pharmacy can work with it now, although the rule is drawn tightly:

• The medicine has to have been prescribed across at least three quarters.
• Only the smallest pack size may be handed out to the person.
• There is no repeat handover without a new prescription.
• Whole categories of medicine are excluded, among them those that need monitoring and those with a high potential for abuse.

Akutversorgung exists in the statute, but the BfArM has to issue implementing recommendations by 2 July 2027, which puts the practical start in the summer of 2027 at the earliest. Until those recommendations exist, a pharmacy has a term to understand rather than a service to run.

Neither rule gives a general power to dispense on pharmaceutical judgement, because both are exceptions written for a defined situation and both leave the prescription as the normal route to a prescription only medicine.

The consequence for a pharmacy reading about the Apothekenreform in the trade press is that the team has to keep the two cases apart, because one of them is live and one of them is not. Blurring them produces either a handover that should not have happened or a refusal that did not need to happen.

The statute text does not settle the operational layer. Who may decide, what has to be recorded, how the case is documented and what the pharmacy must show afterwards are set out in the guidance from the ABDA and the Landesapothekerkammer. That guidance is where a pharmacy should start before it relies on either rule at the counter.