Pharmacy Voice has called on pharmacy teams to share their problems in dealing with the electronic prescription service (EPS).

Pharmacists experiencing the 10 most common EPS problems (listed below) such as their smartcard timing out or struggling to download prescriptions speedily, should inform the representative body, it said on Wednesday (January 4). These would help it get a “real understanding of the difficulties for our members”, it said.

The organisation had identified more than 80 problems associated with EPS and was working with system suppliers as well as the NHS, the Department of Health, PSNC and the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) to resolve them, it said.

EPS users reported a number of problems with the system last year and an issue in October meant pharmacists were forced to turn away patients and work overtime. Pharmacy Voice national IT lead John Palmer said this week that it was “essential” that pharmacy teams continued to raise any issues through their normal support route as well as with the representative body.

“We advise teams to ensure they obtain a call reference number as the issue may need to be escalated through a number of help desks before it can be resolved. This reference will make tracking easier,” Mr Palmer said.

The 10 issues that Pharmacy Voice has highlighted are:

• Prescriptions that contain an incorrect surgery address
   
• Smartcards that time out while they are being used
   
• Claim notifications that refer to an “invalid state”
   
• Prescriptions that are listed as “claimed” on the patient medication record (PMR), but are described on the new prescription tracker as not having been claimed
   
• Prescriptions that cause the PMR system to prompt the user to select a surgery address from a list
   
• An acute prescription that is delayed. These should be available “instantly or at least within a minute of being sent”, Pharmacy Voice says.
   
• Prescriptions that are slow to download
   
• Repeat prescriptions that do not appear when expected, even after the prescription tracker has been used and the prescriber has been contacted to check the repeats have been correctly configured
   
• Prescriptions that are missing an item when they arrive at the pharmacy
   
• Situations where a prescription contains an exempt item and a paid item, but the entire prescription is listed as either exempt or paid

NPA members shoud email their call number and details of the EPS incident to [email protected] and AIMp members should contact [email protected], Pharmacy Voice said. CCA members did not need to take further action as their company's IT helpdesk would let Pharmacy Voice know directly, it said. 

Find tips on dealing with the system from C+D’s EPS troubleshooter guide.