First EPS release two trusts announced

Five primary care trusts will go live with release two of the Electronic Prescription Service from October, NHS Connecting for Health has announced.

Berkshire East, Leicestershire County and Rutland, Liverpool, Southwark and Sunderland PCTs have been chosen as initial implementers for release two which will enable prescribers to sign prescriptions electronically and enable patients to nominate pharmacies.

CfH said over a third of PCTs responded to the invitation to become an initial implementer site for release two of the EPS and a further 12 PCTs are to form a second wave of implementers, going live no earlier than 1 January 2008.

The second wave of PCTs will be Berkshire West, Birmingham East and North, Blackburn with Darwin, City and Hackney, Haringey, Isle of Wight, Leeds, North East Lincolnshire, Nottingham City, Nottingham County, Suffolk and Trafford.

The introduction of release one of the EPS, which was designed to deliver the technical infrastructure for the service , began in early 2005 and almost 2,500 GP practices are now live with the system and 4,472 pharmacy systems have received their technical upgrade. The only noticeable difference in the prescription process with release one is the introduction of barcoded prescriptions.

Under release two patients will have the option to nominate a pharmacy to which their prescription can be sent automatically without the need for the patient to collect a prescription from their GP first. Prescribers will be able to apply digital signatures to create electronic prescriptions.

GPs will also be able to start patients on electronic repeat dispensing and will be able to cancel prescriptions up until the time the prescription is downloaded from the NHS Spine by the dispenser. At the pharmacy dispensing staff will be saved from re-keying information and will be able to send prescription information electronically to the Prescription Pricing Division for reimbursement.

CfH said that in order for prescribers within a PCT to be eligible to operate release two and sign prescriptions electronically a Direction needs to be given to the PCT from the health secretary. Deployment of the EPS is also subject to system suppliers demonstrating that their software is operating correctly. The status of release two systems will be published on the CfH site.  Any dispensing contractors operating release two compliant systems can dispense electronic prescriptions regardless of whether they are in selected PCTs or not.

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