EPS and eRD for clinicians
Recent guidance from NHS England requires a General Practice to consider putting all suitable patients on electronic repeat dispensing (eRD).
Prescribing
There has been recent guidance from NHS England asking General Practice to consider putting all suitable patients on electronic repeat dispensing (eRD).
This will help when their next repeat prescriptions are due, as part of the preparedness for Coronavirus.
Effective eRD can save up to 46 minutes a day of GP time, and if 80% of all repeats were issued as repeat dispensing, 2.7 million GP hours could be saved.
The NHS Digital website has information on switching your practice to EPS. It also has more information on the recently rolled out Phase 4.
If you decide as a practice that you would like to take this work forward and you still have sessional medicines management pharmacists coming into your practice then they can help with the searches and identification of suitable patients.
The West of England AHSN has many resources for clinicians, community pharmacies and patients. Examples include webinars, patient suitability guides and waiting room slides.
The NHSBSA EPS and eRD utilisation dashboards provide information on the electronic prescription service and electronic repeat dispensing. You can access EPS Utilisation prescribing data using the EPS prescribing data dashboard. There is a step by step guide on using the dashboard.
