The decision from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) to remove the requirement for patients to formally nominate a pharmacy to collect their electronic prescription, from March 2017, will reduce confusion for patients who are struggling to understand the new system, Numark has commented.

Andy Charlesworth, Numark’s IT services manager said that the introduction of electronic prescriptions has been a ‘culture change’ for patients. ‘This change may improve the experience for patients as walking in to the pharmacy without a tangible prescription document has been quite a culture change for them. Most people will feel more comfortable walking out the surgery with a script in their hand and the elderly that make up so many of our customers in community pharmacy have not found the change easy,’ he said.

It is hoped that the change will help to remove some problems that have been introduced as a result, such as concerns around inappropriate direction of nominations.

‘The change will overcome issues experienced by some pharmacies and patients where prescriptions have been downloaded by another pharmacy, through incorrect nomination choice, which takes time to undo and is confusing to the patient. We can only hope that this change will also help stop some of the inappropriate practice in bagging nominations.’

Until 2017, dispensing contractors continue to capture nomination consent from patients. Numark offers support for pharmacies in monitoring their nominations on their behalf using data from the NHS spine, said Mr Charlesworth.

‘We are helping our members understand how many nominations they have captured by providing them with the numbers reported directly from the NHS spine – which is the most accurate. If members give Numark consent to capture this information on their behalf here, their nomination statistics will be reported on their monthly rebate statement.’