Care Opinion

Fixing the NHS from the ground up

Posted By Frankly1972

"Fixing the NHS from the ground up"

About: Kiveton Park Medical Practice

(as a carer),

I'm a subject matter expert on repeat prescriptions as my wife and stepdaughter both have chronic conditions and medical exemption for their repeat prescriptions. I currently manage their repeat prescriptions on a monthly basis via the EMIS platform Patient Access. I also am good at fixing broken processes as I am a business change management professional.

Bearing all the above in mind, I believe I'm eminently qualified to suggest a process tweak that can and will transform the prescription renewal process for patients in my surgery catchment area and potentially nationally.

The prescription renewal process via Patient Access is now 6 out of 10 and to be honest although I think it's ok, I wouldn't recommend their solution to my friends and family unless of course they fix it and make it fully patient centric. Here's how you can just do it...

When a patient or carer submits their prescription, the system says Approved when it is really only Submitted at that stage. However the request is only actually Approved 2 days later when a GP logs on to Patient Access. When the GP does that, unlike Care Opinion which generates an email notification for all relevant parties when a further update is published, Patient Access does not notify the patient/carer when their prescription request is Approved nor when it is Dispensed by Lloyds Chemist on Wales Road, Kiveton Park when a further alert should get generated telling the patient/carer to go and collect their now ready meds.

Instead patients and carers often go to collect their prescriptions way ahead of time and local pharmacist Samuel wastes lots of time educating them on the way Patient Access actually works rather than how it should work in an ideal world.

I feel Patient Access is a microcosm of many NHS projects in that effective consultation on the shop floor can often fix lots of things at minimal cost. We all know well that substantive change always comes from the ground up. So why don't we, the carers and patients and you the shop floor workers just do it? 

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Responses

Response from Helen Wyatt, Manager, Patient and Public Involvement , Quality Assurance Team, Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group 6 years ago
Helen Wyatt
Manager, Patient and Public Involvement , Quality Assurance Team,
Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group

I support the organisation in making sure that the voice of patients and the public is heard and used in planning services. This involves running events, managing surveys, and building networks with the local community.

Submitted on 29/11/2017 at 15:55
Published on Care Opinion at 16:35

Dear Frankly1972

Thanks for your comments.

You are right, at the current time, the Patient Access system does not send a notification once the prescription has been processed and sent to the pharmacy. If you think this would be useful, please feed this back to the Patient Access Website; I'm sure they would value this useful reflection.

However, if it would be more useful to have notification once the medication is ready for collection at the pharmacy, please do raise this with your pharmacy.

We know that a number of pharmacy companies will send text or emails to let you know when your medication is ready for collection- as long as you let them know that you would find this useful.

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Update posted by Frankly1972 (a carer)

Quite agree, Helen. Why not on this basis encourage local chemists to collate their service users mobile numbers for this very reason? Perhaps we could call the campaign #HelloMyNumberIs?

Response from Helen Wyatt, Manager, Patient and Public Involvement , Quality Assurance Team, Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group 6 years ago
Helen Wyatt
Manager, Patient and Public Involvement , Quality Assurance Team,
Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group

I support the organisation in making sure that the voice of patients and the public is heard and used in planning services. This involves running events, managing surveys, and building networks with the local community.

Submitted on 04/12/2017 at 10:44
Published on Care Opinion at 12:31

Thanks Frankly1972,

I'll pass that suggestion to my colleagues in medicines management, and see what they can do to encourage this!

Helen

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Response from Kiveton Park Medical Practice 6 years ago
Kiveton Park Medical Practice

Submitted on 15/03/2018 at 14:49
Published on nhs.uk on 16/03/2018 at 02:44

Thank you for your comments and I can forward these suggestions to our support team.

We do inform patients on the website that the process of a repeat prescription takes 48 hours. Unfortunately when the prescription goes to the chemist it is there decision of the timescale involved to process the medication.

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