27.08.20
New e-notifications system rolled out to GP practices by NHS Digital
NHS Digital has started rolling out a new electronic notifications system to GPs for when one of their patients receive an urgent supply of medicine from a community pharmacy.
The system has now gone live for two of England’s largest GP networks and a number of pharmacy systems for medicines supplied as part of the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service and pharmacy-administered flu vaccinations.
It is aimed at improving information sharing efforts between the two sides of the health sector, reducing the need for manual processing of prescriptions and helping to follow up requests for information more efficiently.
Patient records should also be kept more up-to-date as a result of the new system.
Notifications are automatically sent from pharmacies and received by GP practices as a workflow task within their clinical system. For some GP systems, they will also be able to receive structured information, allowing details to be directly added to a patient’s record without the need for manual transcription.
Full details of the urgent supply are still sent to practices in a PDF document to allow for the adding of any additional information if necessary.
NHS Digital Director of Medication, Social Care, Child Health and Maternity, Ian Lowry, said: “This latest stage in the roll out means that a number of GP practices and community pharmacies in England are able to benefit from electronic notifications rather than the current method of email or paper.
“This saves time for both pharmacy and GP practice staff and supports integrated working between care settings when patients need to access essential medicines in an emergency.”