Pharmacy Voice is continuing to work with various organisations to resolve ongoing problems with the electronic prescription service.

Problems were highlighted in recent research by Pharmacy Voice, which found that one in five users rated the system as poor or very poor. The Spine 2 upgrade caused widespread disruption, with no noticeable speed improvment after the upgrade. Split prescriptions also remained a significant issue for over half of respondents.

IT lead at Pharmacy Voice John Palmer said: “As of December 2014, the electronic prescription service in England was processing around 16 per cent of prescription items. There have, however, been significant teething problems with the service, and we need more action from those responsible to rectify these. At the moment, the increase in EPS prescriptions that the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) would like to see will simply mean more problems for pharmacy teams.”

Pharmacy Voice has compiled a database of issues with EPS and assigned them to specific organisations. The organisations it is in direct contact with to resolve problems are:

• Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC)
• NHS England
• The Department of Health
• NHS Business Service Authority (NHSBSA)
• NHS Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (dm+d)
• Software system suppliers.

Pharmacy Voice has issued a series of tips to support EPS users experiencing problems. These can be found at: www.pharmacyvoice.com/images/resources/pharmacy_EPS_tips_(2).pdf