Pharmacies might have to print out a quarter of EPS prescriptions
Paper tokens might need to be generated for over a quarter of prescriptions when release 2 of the electronic prescription service is introduced later this year. But local pharmaceutical committee representatives objected to this at their annual conference last week.
They approved a resolution that the Phar-maceutical Services Negotiating
Committee should reject the plan to ask community pharmacists to print
tokens from electronically generated and transmitted FP10s so that patients
who have nominated a pharmacy but are exempt from paying prescription
charges and are not age exempt can sign the back to claim their exemption
from payment.
Lindsay McClure, head of information services at the PSNC, said that
printing tokens was an interim solution agreed between the PSNC and the
DoH in 2004.
“The PSNC continues to view pharmacy printing the paper token as
an interim solution until a more efficient arrangement can be put in
place,” she
said.
Ms McClure said that, if every patient in England who is taking repeat
medicines chooses to nominate a pharmacy, paper tokens would need to
be printed for 27 per cent of prescriptions.
Malcolm Goldie (Gateshead and Tyneside LPC), who proposed the motion,
said that signing the back of prescriptions to claim an exemption was
first introduced some 40 years ago as an interim measure.
“If this is introduced, it will last until we are in our boxes,” he
said. He suggested that, if the Government genuinely wants to prevent,
rather than pay lip service to preventing fraud it should introduce a
signable electronic device, as has been done by some delivery firms.
Applications are now being sought by the Department of Health from from
primary care trusts for release
2 initial implementer sites (see p359).
Meeting report p378
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