Know About The NHS Electronic Prescription Service

Do you know that at least two-thirds of prescriptions issued in the UK’s primary healthcare are “repeat prescriptions”? According to a medical survey, the electronic prescription services account for nearly 80% of NHS medicine costs for primary care.

There are over 400 million repeat prescriptions generated each year. It is estimated that more than 300 million repeat prescriptions could be replaced with repeat dispensing, which could save approximately 2 million hours of GP surgery.

The government of UK introduced repeat dispensing services in order to provide a more effective way to order and manage repeat prescriptions. The NHS Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) can only be used when the prescribing and dispensing systems use EPS Release 2 (R2).

The Electronic Repeat Dispensing Service allows patients to get repeated supplies of their medicine without the need for the GP prescriber to provide a handwritten prescription each time. The prescriptions are then available for dispensing through a pharmacy that a patient nominates.

A GP practice issues an online prescription using the EPS Release 2 prescribing system, which contains:

• the intended interval between each repeat prescription issued
• how frequently the repeat prescription can be issued

Once the GP practice has prescribed has issued a repeat dispensing prescription, it will be sent to the NHS electronically, where it will be available for download by the dispenser nominated by a patient.

You can use the NHS Electronic Prescription Service only after nominating a pharmacy. The pharmacist can access the electronic prescription and dispense your medicines so that you can collect without much waiting in the store. If you nominate an online pharmacy, you receive your medicines right to your home.

Who is eligible for NHS Electronic Prescription Service?Patients who need a repeat prescription are eligible for repeat electronic dispensing. This includes patients on a stable therapy, with long-standing conditions, on a multiple drug therapy, and those who can manage their seasonal conditions.

PharmacyOutlet offers the NHS Electronic Prescription Service to patients in England only. You can get your prescriptions delivered to your home using the repeat prescriptions by nominating PharmacyOutlet.