The hotel group – the name of which NHS England’s corporate information governance team did not share with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) – received a number of faxes from community pharmacies and GP practices across the country over the past weeks, containing dispensing tokens, certificates and medicines requests, the negotiator said on Monday (February 4).

“It is likely that the fax numbers in question are very similar to a fax number being used within the healthcare system,” PSNC said.

It stressed that pharmacy teams should check they are not using the following numbers:

• 08444 119 012
• 01564 793 558

NHS England reminded pharmacies to “only use fax when no other communication is available”, to confirm details with the recipient before sending sensitive information and to confirm with the recipient once it has been delivered.

PSNC added that any changes in a pharmacy’s contact details must be shared with relevant healthcare contacts to ensure information is not sent to out-of-date or out-of-service numbers.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – which came into force last year – breaches of certain types of data have to be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

In December, health secretary Matt Hancock ordered the NHS to ban all fax machines by 2020, and told C+D that he expects primary care – including community pharmacies – to follow suit.