More than a third of pharmacists want to scrap the electronic prescription service (EPS), a C+D poll has suggested, following another technical error with the system.

Only 5 per cent of 134 respondents to the poll – carried out between October 9 and October 14 – thought that EPS "worked well", while a further 61 per cent called on NHS England to address flaws with the service. Thirty-four per cent said they wanted to scrap EPS completely as their jobs would be "better" if they only dealt with paper prescriptions.

The poll came after the Health and Social Care Information centre (HSCIC) told pharmacists they may have dispensed medicines that were not intended for patients because of an EPS error. Between August 24 and September 20, 1,259 pharmacists downloaded 3,600 repeat prescriptions that prescribers had tried to cancel but could not because of the error, HSCIC told C+D earlier this month.

Pharmacists labelled the system a "shambles", while Mayberry Pharmacy owner Paul Mayberry urged NHS England to get rid of the "over-complicated" EPS in favour of the 2D barcode system used in Wales.

In the Welsh system, called 2DRx, GPs print a 2D barcode onto a patient's prescription. The patient takes the prescription to a pharmacist, who scans the barcode to automatically retrieve information on the patient and their medication without any manual input.

Jeff Shelley, chief information officer at healthcare technology company Invatech Health, backed Mr Mayberry's suggestion and said 2DRx was a "well-designed solution" to the problems caused by EPS. "[It] was significantly cheaper to introduce than EPS [and] gets my vote," he said on Twitter.

Locum pharmacist Qasim Ahmed told C+D he had used both 2DRx and EPS and found the Welsh system "a lot easier to use".

After the latest error, HSCIC called on pharmacists to deal "urgently" with any patients who had been dispensed a cancelled prescription and use their professional judgement to take "any appropriate action". But pharmacists claimed they were always the ones "sorting the mess out" when EPS went wrong.

Extra workload

"Why does it always have to be the pharmacist doing the donkey's work in the name of ‘professional judgement?'" said a community pharmacist posting on the C+D website as N O.

Community pharmacist Stephen Eggleston called on HSCIC to punish those responsible for the error and pay pharmacists for the extra work. Another pharmacist, posting on the C+D website as R A, agreed: "Sorting out someone's mess is not part of the pharmacy contract," they said.

But community pharmacist Nick Thayer defended the service as a "great thing". "I love it. Yes [it] has problems but it signalled the end of faxes," he told C+D on Twitter.

Last month, pharmacists attacked the "disastrous" service for increasing their workload and failing to improve patient care, after an NHS IT update threw the service into chaos, flooding pharmacies with prescriptions from as far back as April.

	How would English pharmacists benefit from using the Welsh 2D barcode system instead of EPS?