PCTs register a third of pharmacists for smartcards

Around one in three community pharmacists have been registered to use a smartcard to use the electronic prescription service (EPS) according to Connecting for Health but pharmacy representatives and businesses are continuing to raise concerns about the speed of rollout.

Connecting for Health has published its first figures on the registration of pharmacists for smartcards which showed 3,315 pharmacists had been registered by 17 April, up from 2,798 the week before. The statistics showed that the South and North West and West Midlands cluster have made the most progress, registering 1,123 and 1,008 pharmacists respectively, while the Eastern cluster has been the least successful, registering just 216 pharmacists by April 17.

However Lindsay McClure, head of information services for the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC), said the PSNC remained concerns about delays in issuing smartcards.

She told EHI Primary Care: “There is a real risk that pharmacy contractors will start paying increased ongoing costs for connectivity and the maintenance of ETP release one compliant systems,  but will find themselves in the position that they cannot claim their ongoing ETP allowance because they haven’t been able to obtain a smartcard from their PCT. Some pharmacy contractors are already in this situation.”

EHI Primary Care understands that the PSNC’s concerns are shared by some of the larger pharmacy chains who fear they will be able to meet two of the three criteria for claiming the ETP allowance, that is N3 connectivity and the installation of compliant software, but will not have smartcards and therefore will be left meeting the expense of connectivity with no allowance to balance the costs.

The PSNC is urging primary care trusts to work closely with local pharmaceutical committees (LPCs) to put in place manageable arrangements for the issue of cards.

McClure said pharmacists should also take into account the likely timescales for their PCT to issue smartcards when planning upgrades to their system.

She said general information for contractors on the process for issuing cards can be found in the pharmacy IT section of the PSNC website. This includes information, where provided, by LPCs or PCTs, on local arrangements for the issue of cards.

A spokesperson for Connecting for Health denied that pharmacists were facing the possibility of paying for connectivity and compliant software without being able to claim the allowance.

He told EHI Primary Care: "We have no evidence to suggest that this problem is occurring and we will continue to monitor the position."

He said the smartcards figure published on the website would give pharmacy contractors and system suppliers an indication of activity in each PCT area. He added: "However, the issue of smartcards remains a matter for PCTs."

Under release one of EPS, which does not allow access to the NHS Care Records Service, only community pharmacists need to be issued with smartcards which can then be used by other members of the pharmacy’s staff under the pharmacist’s jurisdiction. Smartcard arrangements to deal with release two, which will allow digital signing of prescriptions by GPs and nomination of pharmacies, have yet to be agreed.

Deployment and service statistics on the CfH website show that almost 800,000 prescriptions have now been issued using the EPS by April 10 and that 148 pharmacies had received EPS software. There are approximately 10,000 pharmacies in England and 1.3 million prescriptions issued every working day. So far one pharmacy system supplier, AAH, has been granted authority to roll out its release one EPS software.