PSNC has urged pharmacists to renew old smartcards to avoid being locked out of the electronic prescription service (EPS) ahead of a major NHS IT update.


The update between late Saturday night and early Sunday morning (February 21 and 22) will launch a new system, the Care Identity Service. It will involve the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) taking over responsibility for how healthcare professionals log in to the central NHS IT system - the spine - with their smartcard.


Pharmacists with smartcard numbers beginning with 01, 02, or 03 need to contact their local Registration Authority (RA) to request a new card for free ahead of the switchover, PSNC said.


From Sunday, users who still hold cards beginning in 01 or 02 will be permanently locked out of EPS if they enter the wrong passcode three times, while users with cards starting with any of the three codes will not be able to renew them once they expire.


HSCIC told C+D that only a “relatively small percentage” of smartcards still had these old numbers, which are located at the bottom right hand corner of the back of the card.


PSNC said that, under the new system, users with special permissions on their card will be able to unlock another smartcard if the passcode has been entered incorrectly three times.

Pharmacies need to contact their RA – whose details are available from their local NHS England team – if they want one of these cards, PSNC said. Currently, pharmacists have to contact their local RA to unlock their card, it said.


Users with smartcards beginning in 04, 05 or 06 do not have to take any action, but they could experience a “short loss of service” of approximately five minutes on the transition night, PSNC added.

 

Other system changes

HSCIC told C+D that pharmacies with premises cards – used by businesses that have not upgraded to EPS release 2 – will no longer be able to scan in prescriptions after the changes, and will have to manually enter the information. This could affect three per cent of pharmacies, it said.


PSNC said that, after the IT switchover, “fallback smartcards” – temporary cards that pharmacists can request if they have forgotten, lost, or broken theirs – will also stop working. Short-term access smartcards, available for part-time staff whose role or location changes at short notice, will still work as normal, it said.


The service launch was initially planned in November, but HSCIC delayed it to avoid disruption to the NHS.

 

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