The customary way to have a prescription filled is to get a slip of paper with the drug name and dosage written on it, along with your doctor’s signature, and take it to your favorite pharmacy or your doctor’s surgery to be filled. Now, with the use of computer technology, your doctor’s office can send prescriptions to a pharmacy electronically.
The National Health Service has developed the Electronic Prescription Service, EPS, to make getting prescriptions more convenient and efficient for both the patient and pharmacy staffs.
EPS Benefits for Patients
Some of the benefits to having this service makes it more convenient for patients to receive their prescriptions from their physician, especially if a patient has a repeat prescription. There physician’s office can send in repeat prescriptions to the pharmacy of their choose for pick-up or delivery, if the pharmacy has that service. This would work much the same way if the patient used an online prescription service to receive their medications.
There is no paper to keep track of with EPS. Rather than having to hand deliver a piece of paper to the pharmacy to get a prescription and then have to wait until it is filled, the patient’s GP can use EPS to send the information to their pharmacy and it can be waiting on the patient when they go pick it up. This saves time and aggravation if the prescription slip were to be accidentally lost.
These benefits work best for patients with chronic conditions who take medications on a regular basis for their conditions. Repeat prescriptions are much easier to handle with EPS.
EPS Benefits for Pharmacy
When prescriptions are sent electronically, the pharmacy staff doesn’t have to worry about mistakes being made when they re-key information into the system. The information is easily transferred, reducing dispensing errors. This in turn protects the health of the patient and the liability of the pharmacy, because this system can help prevent dispensing mistakes.
With EPS, pharmacies can send their documentation for reimbursements electronically, speeding up the turnaround time for their payments for prescriptions that were covered by the National Health Service. EPS works efficiently for all of those involved in the dispensing of medications. From the initial prescription from the doctor to the delivery into the patient’s hands, EPS helps save time and money during this process. The doctor, patient and pharmacy can all benefit using EPS.