Introducing electronic prescriptions in community paediatric services
We were one of the first organisations in the country to have successfully introduced the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) in paediatric community services.
The Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)
EPS is a process where a prescription is sent electronically to the patient’s chosen pharmacy, or in some cases made available at any pharmacy in England, via the secure NHS spine system.
EPS is secure, as it is built into the clinical system already used and uses the secure NHS Spine system. GPs have been using EPS for some time, allowing patients to collect prescriptions from their nominated pharmacy after they are issued by a doctor. It can mean that patients get their medicine more quickly than if it had been posted to a pharmacy after a virtual consultation.
We introduced EPS to our West Essex Community Paediatric Service during the Covid-19 pandemic, as the Service moved to virtual consultations so that it could keep supporting families while minimising face-to-face contact. EPS has benefits for the patient and family, the prescriber and the pharmacy.
Notable benefits
In normal times, prescriptions would have been handed to the patient at a consultation, but with virtual consultations this was not possible and the number of prescriptions being posted would have increased significantly.
This could mean a longer wait for drugs for patients waiting for a prescription to arrive, a risk of it being lost in transit and additional costs for the NHS since prescriptions needing posting must be sent through secure postal services.
For patients and their families, EPS is hugely convenient ensuring the prescription is sent to a convenient pharmacy.
Pharmacies benefit because they can see from the prescription sent to them that they need to ensure a drug is in stock before a patient comes in, helping to manage their workload.
Electronic prescriptions can be tracked by authorised individuals throughout the process until they are dispensed by a pharmacist so prescribers can make changes if needed for any reason, up until the prescription is downloaded by a pharmacy.
Delivering for the community
Introducing e-prescribing is a part of the delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan, which says that patients must benefit from available digital technologies.
The roll-out of EPS required close partnerships with local NHS commissioners and the Local Pharmaceutical Committee who ensured pharmacies were ready for the service to switch from paper to EPS. In addition, we needed to train our colleagues to use the system – and developed an eLearning package to support clinicians who were mostly working from home, as a result of the pandemic restrictions.
Since launch the service has been well received by prescribers and introducing EPS has allowed families to continue to receive support while avoiding unnecessary face-to-face contact.
Following the rollout in Essex, we are introducing EPS to our consultant paediatricians in Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire STP area and into adult community nursing services we run.
About our West Essex Community Paediatric Team
We work in partnership with Barnardo’s to deliver 0-19 services to communities in Essex, bringing together family hubs, school nursing, and health visiting, and to ‘level up’ communities with a focus on health and social inequality.
Families have easy access to free, high quality, public health services in their community, schools, family home, and our family hubs, from which we reach out to local community settings and delivery sites.
Across the county our committed and dedicated professionals, including health visitors, school nurses and healthy family support workers work together to provide a wide range of services – and in West Essex, our nurses, paediatricians and therapists provide specialist services to the community.
The services we provide aim to make sure that all families are supported, from before children are born up until the age of 19, or 25 for those with special educational needs.
Our focus is on making sure that everyone in Essex has the best possible start in life through meeting identified needs and developing care plans that ensure care is delivered by the most appropriate person at the right time.
Read more about our Essex Child and Family Wellbeing contract
