NHS PRESCRIPTION GUIDE

 About 95% of NHS GP surgeries in England now use the EPS. Your GP can let you know if they’re set up with the NHS Electronic Prescription Service and can provide you with the information you need to sign up to use it.  

 Anyone registered with a GP in England can use the NHS Electronic Prescription Service. If you’d benefit from free home delivery and a handy app to request your medicines on the go, we can take care of your NHS prescriptions for you, including repeat and one-off items.  

If your GP already uses the EPS, they’ll automatically issue your prescriptions electronically. When you sign up to use our free prescription home delivery service, we’ll ask for: 

• Your name and date of birth 
• The details of your GP surgery 
• The details of any medicines you’re prescribed. 

You can make the registration process even quicker by providing your NHS number, if you know it. 

Confirm what medication you need and when you’ll need it. We can then arrange for your GP to approve your prescription. Once approved, our pharmacy team will check and dispense your medication, before sending it for delivery by our inhouse drivers.  

The electronic prescription is received by your chosen pharmacy as soon as the doctor sends it.  

You should order your prescription as soon as you need it, but please leave enough time for processing and delivery.  

Akram Pharmacy aims to check, dispense, pack, and dispatch prescriptions as quickly as possible, ensuring it’s with our drivers within 48 hours of your request. We recommend placing your request 7 working days before you need your medicine in the unlikely event of any delays. 

 All Akram Pharmacy NHS prescription deliveries are free.  

The NHS Electronic Prescription Service lets you choose the pharmacy you want to dispense your prescriptions. You can change your chosen pharmacy at any time, and no one else can change this without your consent. You can use the NHS app to change your preferred pharmacy, or tell your GP which pharmacy you want the prescription to go to. 

If you need to make a temporary change to your chosen pharmacy, for example, if you need to collect it when you’re away from home or when your regular pharmacy is closed, speak to your GP or pharmacist during your consultation. They can give you what’s called a ‘non-nominated’ digital prescription or a paper prescription which can be used at any pharmacy. 

If one-off nomination functionality is available within the prescribing system, this can be used to override your regular nominated pharmacy for a single prescription. At the point of prescribing, there will be the option to choose a one-off nomination for a community pharmacy listed in the Directory of Services (DOS), with their opening times displayed. Further prescriptions will go back to the normal nominated pharmacy.

 Ask your GP or pharmacist when they’re prescribing your medication if you’d prefer to collect a paper prescription and take it in person to a local pharmacy.  

 The EPS means you can organise for your prescription to be sent to another pharmacy in England as a one-off, or on a temporary basis. Just update your preferred pharmacy in the NHS app, or let your GP surgery know the details of the pharmacy you’d like your next prescription to be sent to. If you’re changing it in the NHS app, remember to change back to your usual pharmacy before you request your next prescription. 

While the EPS can’t be used to send prescriptions overseas, you can place your prescription request from anywhere in the world using Pharmacy2U’s website or app.  

Safety and security have been considered at every stage of the NHS Electronic Prescription Service. Only authorised healthcare workers have access to the Electronic Prescription Service and can only access it with authentication from the NHS Care Identity Service 2 (NHS CIS2). 

Business Continuity Mode is used to keep your information safe, generating an alert on the NHS Spine database of health and social care organisations, workers, and IT systems when entered. 

Only the same people who have access to paper prescriptions can also access digital prescriptions, including GP surgeries, pharmacies, NHS prescription payments, and fraud agencies

Contact Akram Pharmacy on 01226 752253 or use the live chat service on our website.