Scottish Government highlights eAMS advice
New guidance has been issued to help pharmacists implement eAMS |
The Scottish Government this week highlighted three areas within new online guidance for the electronic Acute Medication Service (eAMS) that pharmacists need to pay particular attention to.
The eAMS resource includes sections on how electronic transfer of prescriptions
(ETP) works, the software that supports ETP and payment processing (ePay).
A quick reference guide to eAMS is also being developed.
Alison Strath, principal pharmaceutical officer, Scottish Government,
said that pharmacists should pay attention to advice on dealing with
exceptions (ie, situations where the usual ETP process does not occur),
for example, when a prescription has been amended by the GP, or when
a prescription cannot be completely dispensed and an owing has to be
created.
“Second, pharmacists … need to understand the principles of
electronic endorsing and then consider how their patient medication record
system
supports them in carrying [it] out,” explained Ms Strath.
“Third is housekeeping. It is critical for the successful running
of ETP that regular housekeeping is carried out. This means managing
electronic
messages in the same way that paper prescriptions have to be managed
now.”
She added that as pharmacists complete each section of the pack they
should consider how they might need to adapt some of their working practices.
The resource pack is published on the NHS Education for Scotland website
(PDF 870K).
Paper copies of the pack will be sent to community pharmacies
in May 2008.
Latest
figures from the Scottish Government show
that 269 GP practices and 173 community pharmacies in Scotland now
have live eAMS software in place. |
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