The patient medication record (PMR) system provider, which has been offering an integrated mass texting service for pharmacists as part of its Analyst medicines management system, will end its in-house messaging service on September 19.

Pharmacy teams can use the service to text patients updates to services or remind them to book their flu vaccination, for example.

Positive Solutions told C+D it issued a notification on June 21, communicating that its SMS service would stop in 90 days from then. The PMR provider has partnered with telecommunications service provider Esendex to give pharmacies “an integrated SMS text service for users of Analyst PMR”, Esendex wrote on its website.

Pharmacist not aware of change

One Nottingham-based pharmacist has told C+D he was not aware of the change until he bought a new phone and was unable to find and download the app used to send the mass text messages.

Raza Ali, contractor at Riverside Pharmacy in Nottingham, contacted his representative at Positive Solutions in early July, at which point he was told the company was moving to an SMS system powered by Esendex.

Despite being told that the change had been communicated to customers, Mr Ali claimed that neither he nor other contractors he knows who also use the system had been notified. Positive Solutions maintains that customers were told of the change in June.

“Massive cost implication”

The switch to this new provider will see Mr Ali's text messaging service – which he says including a sim card currently sets him back around £13 a month for unlimited texts – cost upwards of 2.5p per message, according to Esendex's website.

“Obviously, there’s a massive cost implication now for these pharmacies who are using this service,” Mr Ali said. “Because we send loads of text messages over the period of flu jabs and whatnot, it’s going to cost us several hundreds of pounds.

“We’ve been given 90 days’ notice, supposedly – I haven’t; nobody’s been sent these details out, but that’s supposedly what they’ve been doing,” Mr Ali claimed.

A spokesperson for Positive Solutions told C+D: “Positive Solutions communicated our intention to cease integration for the mobile devices on June 21, giving users a minimum of 90 days’ notification.”

“When NHS Mail announced the termination of free SMS, Positive Solutions developed an interim solution utilising add-on hardware communicating via a SIM card provided by the customer.

“Over time, it had become apparent that the solution required increased stability and resilience, leading to an investigation into the best solution for our customers. Positive Solutions believes that using a cloud-based data carrier solution such as Esendex gives our customers the stability and resilience, not offered by budget, personal contracted data carriers, required for patient-centric messaging and maximising pharmacy’s ability to communicate with patients.”

The spokesperson added that Positive Solutions’s decision to stop its SMS service “had not been made on a commercial basis”, that it “shares no revenue with Esendex and only acts as an intermediary between pharmacy and the message provider”.

C+D has approached Esendex for comment.

'Stuck' with three-year contract

The problem is more acute for Mr Ali than others, who says he may not be able to shop around for another, cheaper provider. Last year, he signed a three-year contract with Positive Solutions, which involved the purchase of new terminals, he said.

“In terms of the PMR, we’re stuck – we can’t go anywhere; we’ve got a three-year contract with them. The worst thing is we’ve had to pay upfront for this machinery,” he explained. “We had to buy the computers [from] them, otherwise we’d have to integrate [our automated dispensing machine] with a completely new PMR system, and that may have thrown up problems.” 

The Positive Solutions spokesperson responded that the company “would never push customers to make any decision but do often provide impartial technical advice to help our customers maximise the efficiency and supportability of their PSL provided hardware".

Mr Ali uses the mass texting service not only for day-to-day business but also for his COVID-19 vaccination centre. Had he known the cost would become so large, he said he would have chosen another provider, he told C+D.

“This would have been a decision that would have been taken well in advance of it happening, and they could have told us that this was going to happen [further in advance] and I would have said, ‘OK, actually fine, I’m not going to sign up’,” he commented.