‘No straightforward solution’: GP tech issue causes pharmacy ‘confusion’
There is “no timescale” for when the Vision GP prescribing system will be fixed, Community Pharmacy Scotland (CPS) has said.
Scottish pharmacies should “engage” with GPs to work around an “issue with a particular version of the ‘Vision’ GP prescribing system”, CPS announced this week (July 9).
CPS said that it has been “made aware” that prescribers using the software are being made to “specify a start date for instalment prescriptions”.
Instead of this being an “optional feature”, it has “been made a mandatory step when generating an instalment prescription and defaults to today’s date if not altered”, it added.
But “for the majority of instalment prescriptions, the prescriber will be unaware of and likely not particularly invested in the actual start date for dispensing,” according to CPS.
Dispensing start dates for some prescriptions like dosette packs “may be some time in the future”, it said, adding that “clearly, this may cause some confusion locally”.
CPS said that the issue affected “some – but not all – sites using the software in Scotland”.
“No timescale” for fix
The Scottish negotiator said that “the national group overseeing GP IT developments has been made aware” of the new “mandatory step” and is “seeking a fix”.
“But we have no timescale for this as yet,” it added.
“There is also no straightforward interim solution that can be applied nationally as only the prescriber can make clear their intentions,” CPS said.
“Our suggestion should you come across this would be to engage with the GP or pharmacotherapy teams locally to confirm whether the ‘default’ dates can be ignored where appropriate,” it added.
GP software chaos
Meanwhile, BMA England general practitioners committee (GPC England) chair Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer last month urged large numbers of GPs to switch off the “update record” function of GP Connect.
In April, C+D exclusively revealed that pharmacists were finally able to update GP records with Pharmacy First consultation data after delays to the functionality since the common conditions service launched in January meant they had to use “cumbersome alternatives”.
But guidance published by the BMA warned that the update record function “could potentially further enable workload and subtle responsibility transfer from an external provider directly to the GP in the future”.
At the time, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) said that it appeared “counterintuitive to switch off functionality designed to reduce administrative workload at practices and improve patient safety”.
Last week, the BMA said that it “broadly welcomes the Pharmacy First scheme” but that GPs need to “feel confident about referring to a new service”.
