Great expectations

We are using Pharmacy Manager. And have been "live" for the past three months.

Like you, we are not sure about the sending of claims - but I'm working on that.

The most important thing to do is to get those nomination forms printed out, given to patients, and received back. That is priority number 1. Get your staff to explain to customers if they ask, but have leaflets explaining this to customers.

Problems: Scripts being sent to wrong pharmacies (if the surgery has initiated a prescription); prescription direction by GPs; smart card problems e.g. blocked smart card; staff having to learn new system.

Is there a person at your PCT who is the ICT champion, who can help you or give you guidance? We have one for West Kent PCT who has been a good help.

Also Off Topic, but your name appears on the dispensing doctors website in one of their articles from a couple of months ago...

Hi Sachin, on the dispensing doctors website is that to do with the pharmacy name error? I've spent a month trying to sort that out. The name of our pharmacy kept coming up as MR R PATEL, and obviously no body knew who on earth that was. It was/is worrying because any patient wishing to send their prescription to us may be told we were not on the surgery's list hence probably not live as yet.

It should hopefully be sorted out this week, and anybody else in a similar position, please note that it seems the pharmacy name that appears at the GP surgery is not linked to GPhC premises registration, not linked to NHS choices, not linked to RPSGB but in fact SOLELY on the name that appears on your PPD statment. It took a while to figure this out as each various department updated their records and nothing changed at the surgeries. Each department therefore thought it was another's error.

Hi Ravi

Good to hear that you've started to use EPS - but oh dear, oh dear!
Sounds like your training was shocking - EPS is both new software and a new way of working - so you absolutely must have good training to get you up and running.

Let me address some of the poor advice you've been given:

Month end: your PMR system should be able to produce a FP34C report for EPS - you can use this to calculate your month end EPS totals. If you wish you may want to count your tokens -many pharmacies new with EPS like to do that too, until they are more comfortable with the new processes.

You then need to add the EPS totals (forms and items) to the FP10s - and the TOTAL figure is written in the FP34C document. (nothing is written between the boxes)

There is guidance on our website at: http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/eps/dispensing/using

Tokens: what do you need to send to BSA? just those that are non-age exempt or paid. If they are <16 or >60 no need to have a token signed, sorted or submitted.

Repeat precsriptions: a prescription clerk preparing a prescription to send to a prescriber to sign -is exactly the same process as in the paper world. except nothing is printed - it CAN be sent to an individual Dr to sign or into a "global list" of repeats -depending on the particular working practices at the surgery- in any event the staff are able to re-assign any prescriptions not signed by a Dr. It seems to me that the trainers at the GP surgery also missed some important elements.

Prescriptions sent to a Dr for signing - remain in the local system until signed and there is a view to see " all prescriptions" if the staff can't find it. Should stop all those issues of "it's been collected", "No it hasn't".

One of the big issues that we are seeing out on sites is that the training has not been sufficient to ensure a smooth tranisition to EPS. Please continue to raise your issues.

To be fair to some suppliers though - We have had several instances where pharmacies have complained but refused to take the face to face training on offer. I know this was not offered in your case. But it's a mixed picture out there.

let me know how you get on.

If you haven't already please sign upto our bulletin for the latest information and top tips from end-users at: http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/eps/contacts/signup


You can also follow us on twitter: @EPSnhs
(or you can follow my tips on: @EPSPharmacist)

http://www.dispensingdoctor.org/content.php?id=1980

Before anyone asks my opinion on this, I do not want to give any opinions on that article, other than that I think Ravi should be allowed to comment on that article written about him on the website.

I think the Doctor missed what I was saying. My emphasis was on the fact that some GPs seemed to be actually asking a sort of levy to local community pharmacists that that they did NOT open a 100-hour pharmacy in their practice - which I think is criminal, let along unethical. The particular one I mentioned was happening in Derby, midlands.

Thanks Mohammed, this info has been helpful and I believe it will definitely answer questions other pharmacists also have / had.

Appreciate your time in helping clear some things up.

I agree with Ravi- we had little training from the suppliers, just a few minutes when we went EPS2 enabled about a year ago, which was a long time ago for my addled, forgetful, brain, and an often slow to respond help desk.

We are going live in a few weeks time and the PCT have asked me to contribute a quote to a press release they are putting out to local papers. They want me to reaffirm how beneficial EPS2 is going to be for the patient. Trouble is that I cannot think of one plus point, for me or the patient. It will be slower than our current system which uses paper, has the potential for being unreliable (how many release 1 Rx's have you had trouble downloading- a lot in my case), and we will have just about as much paper as before (which we now have to print and maintain). I reckon it would have been easier and cheaper to run a long printer cable from the surgery computer direct to my printer. We may however eventually be paid more accurately and promptly, which would be nice!

I have only had experience of two pmr programs using EPS1. My current one, also from a major supplier, seems to have two parts, one ordinary pmr and another part for the EPS, and the two parts seem largely unconnected, which can mean quite a lot of logging in and out of the EPS bit- slow. The EPS part is also somewhat unfriendly, but I suspect that this may in part be due to the constraints laid down by CfH on the program designers. Also the Spine seems slow when accessed through the network provider we are required to use (IMS in my case). The charges the network providers make to the NHS seem horrendous, I hope the NHS gets its money's worth.

I have also used a couple of years ago a certain internet based PMR system, which means that your own computer doesn't actually do any PMR processing. This was interesting as the EPS1 function on this was VERY quick (typically one second), because the central server which actually did all the processing was connected directly to the Spine. This PMR was a brilliant concept, and may eventually be the way to go ('Cloud' computing as the jargon has it). It also made hardware requirements much simpler as all you need is a computer that can access web pages (any computer will do, if yours fails just plug in another one, even a spare from home). However it was let down by a flaky and quirky program interface, more importantly by limited data updates and resources, and sometimes by a lack of awareness of pharmacy requirements (legal and otherwise), which all worried me. Hopefully it has improved now.

The next few weeks may be exciting, we will see. The local response from the GP's seems a little muted. Patients seem concerned about how they are going to order their scripts (the message 'just as now' seems to be missing). And as usual I'm the one at the end of the problem chain who's going to have to sort it all out. Thanks a bunch.

Thank you Francis... I will add the process of ordering scripts "just as now" to my nomination forms.

You know with the internet system - Pharmasys - I used the demo version a few years ago and I really liked it. At the moment it has not got ETPR2 compliance, which is a major disadvantage if you are in a live GP environment. But it would be good when having multiple terminals in a pharmacy.

I would have assumed that with it being an "cloud app", Pharmasys would be frequently updated (as it is easy to update and deploy to all client pharmacies).

Yes it was updated easily because the program itself is actually on the supplier's server, so it is instantly updated. Trouble for me was it needed updating too often. On one occasion the update was fairly majorly flawed, but was resolved within a few hours- however this flaw did affect all the users on that Saturday morning. Too many issues (some fairly serious, to my mind anyway) - for example drug data updates- some drugs were just missing, and I seem to recall some label warnings were missing. They pointed out that I could always add a drug if I needed it, and they also pointed out that this would be good as then the new drug would be available to all other users. This worried me- I'm not an expert at adding a drug, what happened if I got it wrong? The drug files didn't list even all the major brands of a generic- I think this is important to record, esp with eps2 looming. In all they didn't seem to have all the resources needed to do the job properly.

A pity because the concept is brilliant- no worries about backups because that is their problem as the data isn't actually on your own system (a two edge sword I know as you won't actually possess your own data), no worries about maintenance contracts as you can use any spare computer- computer speed is not really an issue. You are reliant on the broadband link which is a worry, but with eps2 that is also an issue. They were talking about a sort of backup program on your own computer to cope with broadband outages, but I don't know if it ever came to be. Also they would put a 3G dongle on the computer so that if the broadband went down you could use a mobile internet connection. And nicely you could have as many terminals as you needed- just switch on another computer and connect to their server.

There were too many potential problems for me to be happy, but it was 2 or 3 years ago, maybe they have got their act together by now. The concept looks like the way to go in the grand scheme of things.