"Ordering prescriptions"

Thank you for taking the time to post your comments.

We are sorry to learn of your concerns regarding the local Chemists in the Tameside area. Unfortunately, we are unable to assist with concerns relating to the Chemists in the area as we do not provide this service. We would advise you to contact NHS England regarding your concerns who will be able to assist. They can be contacted by phone on 0300 311 22 33 or by emailing them on england.contactus@nhs.net.

Thank you.

At Healthwatch we have had a similar question asked by another person recently. We have raised this with the local Clinical Commissioning Group. We will ask them to respond to your post here as part of the work they are doing to answer our direct question to them.

In conjunction with NHSE the CCG makes the following statement: -

Ordering medication on behalf of patients is not a NHS commissioned service. It’s is a private arrangement between the patient, pharmacy and GP practices

Ordering, prescribing and dispensing of medications to patients that are not required or have been discontinued is a concern both for creating significant waste to the NHS and patient safety.

If a pharmacy does order a medication that has been discontinued for a patient and the GP practice prescribes it, both parties hold some responsibility for prescribing that medication

If a medication is requested by a pharmacy and prescribed by a GP practice that a patient identifies as not required when collecting the medication from the pharmacy; this may represent a waste medicines cost to the NHS. The pharmacy is able to mark as not dispensed and return the medication to stock.

The requirements of the current pharmacy contract is to dispense what is prescribed with reasonable promptness. There is not a specific requirement to check if patients need an item with standard prescriptions. There is however a standard of best practice that pharmacies should follow when ordering on behalf of patients which includes checking what medicines patients need shortly before the medicines are due and ordered.

Prescribing and dispensing of medications which are not taken by patients can be as a result of over ordering by pharmacies, GP practices prescribing items which are not required or patients requested items they do not require

There is a commissioned NHS service in Electronic Repeat Dispensing, which GP practices should offer to patients and pharmacies have to provide to patients as part of their NHS contracts. This service is not suited to all patients. Within this service there is a requirement for pharmacies to check with patients that each medication is required at the point of dispensing. There is currently a joint work-stream between pharmacy and GP providers across GM to promote and support increased uptake of the Electronic Repeat Dispensing Service. Uptake of this service would reduce the need for pharmacies to offer repeat medication ordering services to patients

Repeat dispensing can be used to complement practices’ medication reviews process to ensure only current medication regime are re-authorised to reduce likelihood of having access to non-current therapy