Every eligible GP practice in London has now introduced the electronic prescription service, NHS Digital has said.
A total of 1,311 GP surgeries across the UK capital can now use the paperless system to send patient prescriptions directly from the practice to a pharmacist.
The most immediate boon of the electronic prescription service (EPS) is that it cuts out unnecessary steps for patients, who have previously had to take a physical prescription printed by a doctor to a pharmacy.
It began being pushed out nationally across urgent care settings in April.
Keith Farrar, senior responsible owner for digital medicines at NHS England, said: “I am really pleased that this service is now available to all London GPs. EPS supports the seamless flow of information about prescription needs for patients and reduces administrative time, freeing up resources for direct patient care.
“This is a tremendous achievement from a great many people involved behind the scenes in improving the delivery of care to patients.”
NHS Digital estimates that EPS has saved the NHS some £130m over the past three years.
It also aims to make referrals for first, consultant-led, outpatient appointments paperless at every UK practice by October this year.
Along with cutting time, cost and hassle in general, EPS cuts practices’ reliance on paper, a central theme of the ever-shifting ‘Paperless NHS’ agenda.
Jignesh Patel, a pharmacist at Rohpharm Pharmacy in Plaistow, said: “The electronic prescription service has been fantastic in releasing us from carrying out a lot of paperwork and having to store a big paper audit trail as everything is now stored digitally.
“It is saving us a lot of time and, when GPs use electronic repeat dispensing, it can save themselves, patients and pharmacists even more time.”
EPS has paved the way for electronic repeat dispensing (eRD), which allows prescribers to authorise a batch of prescriptions for regular medicines for up to 12 months at one time.
This means patients don’t need to keep returning to their doctor’s surgery to collect repeat prescriptions – a bugbear that start-ups have sought to solve with apps such as Echo.
Alastair Grenfell, head of NHS Digital’s London Implementation and Business Change team, said: “Reaching every GP practice in London has been a significant challenge and I’m both pleased and proud of all those in the NHS Digital team and those in the wider NHS that have worked hard to achieve this fantastic result.”
14 August 2018 @ 13:10
Eps2 has improved things and opened up lots of opportunities to innovate but to call it paperless is a joke from Pharmacy point of view as it has simply shifted the cost of printing tokens onto Pharmacies on top of recent 20‰ cuts and massive drug sjortages/price hikes. We have to print most tokens as the alternative would investing in £10k plus computer terminals. Maybe when PMR suppliers catch up with the functionality and have lower cost tablets for viewing electronic prescriptions for the checking and dispensing process we will see more benefit.
10 August 2018 @ 21:38
eP with AI can help doctors to serve the people they serve even better and it is great for their safety
14 August 2018 @ 14:14
This is what I said yesterday to my colleague, the main thing to consider is error regarding the procedure and responsibility issues.
10 August 2018 @ 09:35
It’s good that they “can” now use it. It will take a long time before they are using EPS for the majority of their prescriptions though. You have to get a nominated pharmacy from each individual – it is very time consuming and a slow process.
10 August 2018 @ 15:03
Which the pharmacies have usually done in large part because it’s good for business but clinicians can do it within several seconds if they want to. Rita is correct, it’s not totally paperless, a Token is produced along the line, but at least an electronic notification has a chance to be sent or be called from the Spine.
10 August 2018 @ 07:50
It is indeed a great service but most pharmacists require a token to check off work done by dispensers and technicians so not paperless to all pharmacies.
9 August 2018 @ 16:44
Great work.