NPfIT defends its ETP plans

The National Programme for IT has defended its plans for electronic transmission of prescriptions (ETP) which it says will enhance rather than restrict patient choice.

The programme’s proposals to allow GPs and other prescribers to nominate a patient’s pharmacy were criticised by the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) and an all party group of MPs last week as leading to direction of prescriptions.

Tim Donohoe, group programme director for the National Programme for IT, assured EHI Primary Care this week that patient choice would be protected. He said: "There has never been any intention to restrict patient choice or to allow healthcare professionals to choose for patients."

Donohoe claimed the facility for a patient to nominate a preferred pharmacy would not jeopardise patient choice but improve convenience for patients who would not need to collect a paper prescription from their prescriber.

He added: "The electronic prescription service has been designed with the intention of increasing patient choice and convenience. The details of their prescription will be received automatically at their chosen pharmacy. If the pharmacy offers a home delivery service, the medication can then be delivered to the patient. This is likely to benefit patients who obtain repeat prescriptions from their GP on an ongoing basis."

The ETP system will allow patients to make the choice whether or not to nominate a preferred pharmacy at the point of prescribing, dispensing or in future via a secure website. Those who do not nominate a pharmacy will be given a prescription with a bar code which can be scanned by the pharmacy to retrieve the prescription details electronically.

Donohoe added: "Patients do not have to nominate a pharmacy if they do not wish to. Patients who have nominated a pharmacy can also change their nomination to a different pharmacy, suspend the nomination on a temporary basis, or remove the nomination completely."

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) is concerned that nomination of pharmacy by a prescriber may lead to direction of prescriptions.

Donohoe said NPfIT was aware of the PSNC’s concerns and was still working on the details of how the nomination system will work.

He added: "The National Programme understands that the PSNC, as part of the New Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework, have had full discussions with the Department of Health on this matter."

The first early adopter site for ETP which went live on February 21 in Keighley, West Yorkshire, does not use pharmacy nomination.

Relevant staff at the practice, Ling House Medical Centre in Keighley, and the Co-operative Group Pharmacy, all have an NHS smartcard for personal authentication with role-based access control.

A spokesperson for NPfIT told EHI Primary Care that the systems used by the practice and the pharmacy are ETP compliant and registered with the spine directory service as accredited end points.

He added: ‘This ensures that both the person using the system and the system itself at that location are registered for sending and receiving messages to/from the spine. This gives an additional layer of security, preventing unauthorised access to the electronic prescriptions service.’

The Keighley site is to be the first in a small number of early implementers although no details of other sites are available as NPfIT says it is still finalising arrangements.

A spokesman said NPfIT was aiming to make ETP available to a significant number of users this year and to all users by the end of 2007.