Cegedim Rx told C+D it had been alerted to “a potential issue with customer ability to connect to the internet and the electronic prescription service (EPS)”, at 11.35am, but stressed that “a large portion of Cegedim Rx customers have not been affected by the issue”.

Contractor David Sharp told C+D this afternoon (February 28) that EPS is down across his three pharmacies in Doncaster.

“All three branches can’t access the spine at all,” he said. “We know there are prescriptions sat there waiting to be downloaded, but we can’t access them.”

Mr Sharp said he is still waiting for an urgent EPS prescription to come through from his local GP.

“As you can imagine, it's the last day of the month, we’re trying to get everything in,” he said.

“It’s affecting our ordering too,” he added.

Cegedim response

Cegedim told C+D: “The root cause of the issue has now been identified by our supplier, who is working to fix this as soon as possible.”

“Guidance has been added to our service desk phone lines and regular communications are being issued. We would recommend that customers follow their business continuity processes until the outage is resolved.”

“Cegedim Rx would like to apologise to customers impacted by this issue and reassure them that we are doing everything within our power to rectify the problem,” it added.

The outage reports come less than a year after Cegedim announced a "resilient" new system to deal with previous problems with EPS.

Readers share stories on Twitter:

@ChemistDruggist @CandDJamesW Cegedim RX Internet and Sending Orders down. Phoned them and they are sorting out. They'll send message soon

— sachin badiani (@thesupersach) February 28, 2017

@ChemistDruggist last day of the month and cannot claim any eps 2 scripts. This could bankrupt some pharmacies if they are unable to claim

— Chris Armstrong (@cjarmstrong2) February 28, 2017

@ChemistDruggist message from our other branch!! pic.twitter.com/5Cc3zjFjzu

— WLNP (@WidnesPharmacy) February 28, 2017

@hannahspana94 @ChemistDruggist
finally got through national n3 problem apparently funny my husbands pharmacy has no problem on proscript

— Pledger Pharmacy (@pledgerpharmacy) February 28, 20

@ChemistDruggist no problem with #RxWeb branches - just our cegedim ones - personal hotspot will help with sending orders

— sachin badiani (@thesupersach) February 28, 2017

@ChemistDruggist Yes. Can't access electronic cd register or transmit orders either. Why always cegedim?

— Amish Patel (@amishpatel1985) February 28, 2017