Date of publication: August 2009

The dispensing process is at the heart of community pharmacy practice. An efficient and safe dispensing process is an important prerequisite for a community pharmacy to provide new, clinically-focused services – firstly, because it will support those services and secondly, because it will release pharmacist time to provide those services.

The Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) Release 2 presents an opportunity for pharmacists in that it has the potential to streamline the dispensary workflow and thereby improve dispensing capacity, and the accuracy and safety of the dispensing process. In order for dispensing staff to benefit fully from EPS Release 2, it is important to consider how local processes and Standard Operating Procedures can be modified to ensure the new service is used to its maximum potential.

Who is this guidance for?

This web-based only document is aimed at pharmacists and their staff involved in any form of dispensing.

How should this guidance be used?

This guidance should be used by pharmacists to formulate their dispensary Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) when implementing EPS Release 2.

They should be used in conjunction with the EPS Release 2 Business Process Guidance for initial implementers from NHS Connecting for Health, available here.

This guidance will be updated in future, to take into account experience arising from the EPS Release 2 initial implementer sites, and other developments in pharmacy practice.

Learning objectives

This guidance will help pharmacists to achieve the following learning objectives:

1. An understanding of the pharmacy professional issues arising from the use of EPS Release 2 in their pharmacy
2. How to manage risk issues in the dispensing process following the implementation of EPS Release 2
3. An understanding of the resources available to help pharmacists formulate their pharmacy procedures following the implementation of EPS Release 2 in their pharmacy.

The following sections, all contained within the guide can be downloaded separately as listed below:

• Principles of good dispensing – This section contains the following:
  
  
• The scope of IT systems
• Education and training
• Confidentiality
• Staff communication skills
• Maintaining patient choice
• Business processes and risk management

NHS Connecting for Health Electronic Prescription Service – This section contains the following:

• What is the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)?
• Advanced electronic signatures
• Prescription types out of scope for EPS Release 2
• Pharmacy system requirements

Dispensary procedures and the Electronic Prescription Service – This section contains the following:

• Smartcards
• Nomination of a dispensing site
• Obtaining permission for nomination in the pharmacy
• Information to be provided to patients concerning nomination
• Cancelling/changing a patient’s nomination
• Prescription tokens
• Retrieval of prescriptions from the EPS
• Problems with EP retrieval
• Dispensing tokens
• Supplementary clinical information
• Professional checking
• Substitution
• Labelling of prescriptions
• Assembly of prescriptions
• Accuracy checking
• Owings & out of stock items
• Dispense notification
• Submission of reimbursement endorsement messages
• Cancellation of electronic prescriptions
• Electronic repeat dispensing
• Data structure and product selection
• Standard operating procedures
• Business continuity

Glossary of terms - This section provides a definition of some of the key terms used throughout the guidance.

Template for EPS nomination consent form