We have made the decision to no longer issue paper prescriptions at this surgery.

 

What do patients need to do

• We would strongly encourage patients to sign up to online ordering wherever possible, either https://rb.gy/ouw7yz or https://rotherhamhealthapp.com/splash
• We would also encourage patients to nominate a pharmacist https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-app/nhs-app-help-and-support/prescriptions-in-the-nhs-app/nominating-a-pharmacy/
• If you do not wish or are unable to nominate a pharmacy, then your prescription will still be issued electronically but information will be secured digitally in ‘the cloud’. We will send you a text message with the unique ETP Barcode Number for you to show to a pharmacy of your choice.

 

Benefits

• If you previously collected repeat prescriptions from the Health Centre, you will no longer have to visit your GP practice just to pick up your paper prescription. Instead, your GP will send the prescription electronically to a pharmacy of your choice, saving you time.
• The prescription is an electronic message so there is no paper prescription to lose.
• You will have more choice about where to get your medicines from because they can be collected from a pharmacy near to where you live, work or shop.
• If the prescription needs to be cancelled the GP can electronically cancel and issue a new prescription without you having to return to the practice – saving you extra trips.
• Often we are asked to reprint prescriptions which may have gone astray. Clearly this is a major concern to us with regards to patient safety and confidentiality GDPR.
• For clinical safety with regards to checking if medication reviews are up to date and ensuring that there is a full electronic audit trail.
• We have monitored the time it is taking our staff to reprint paper prescriptions, therefore to save time for our staff (GP’s and also our Reception Team) thus allowing them to focus on other workload priorities, including seeing patients and answering our telephones.
• As a practice, we are fully committed to the sustainability and reduction of our carbon footprint. We have signed up to being a ‘Greener Practice’ and will continue to work with both our staff and patients to improve our carbon footprint.

 

Timescale

It is the patient’s responsibility to ensure that they are requesting their repeat prescriptions in a timely manner to ensure that they do not run out of their regular medications.

Please note that ALL prescription requests should be made 7 days before you run out – the surgery also requires 72 working hours to prepare all prescription requests.

 Unfortunately, we are unable to guarantee that medication requested on the same day it runs out will be issued that day, please help us by requesting your prescription in a timely manner.

 We regret that we have been unable to take prescription requests over the phone since 13th July 2018