Supporting EPS live assurance in North Wales: a day in practice

By Mark Allen, National Clinical Informatics Lead, and Jonathon Campbell, Digital Medicines GP Lead, DMTP

Recently, we visited Bodowen Surgery in Holywell, North Wales, to support live assurance of a dispensing system enabled for the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS). This involved checking how the system worked in everyday practice, alongside the staff using it to provide care for patients.

The visit gave us an opportunity to see how EPS fitted into the team’s day-to-day prescribing and dispensing processes.

A dispensing doctor practice operates differently from a community pharmacy. At Bodowen Surgery, prescribing and dispensing both take place within the same practice, through its on-site dispensary. It was particularly valuable to see how the technology supported the complete journey, from prescribing through to dispensing, within a single organisation.

The visit also highlighted how EPS could benefit the wider practice. Moving away from paper-based prescription processes has the potential to reduce administrative handling, simplify prescription workflows and improve efficiency, as well as providing a more streamlined service for patients.

By extending EPS to patients who receive their medicines from the practice dispensary, Bodowen Surgery is helping more patients benefit from digital prescribing. This also offers the practice an opportunity to use a more consistent process across its prescribing and dispensing services.

The day highlighted the importance of having technical support available when introducing new digital processes. Printer configuration for EPS token printing required additional support and caused some delay. EPS tokens are paper copies of electronic prescription details, which can be printed when staff need a paper reference to support the dispensing process. The prescription itself remains electronic. This provided a useful learning point for future implementation.

Despite this challenge, the practice team remained enthusiastic and positive throughout. Staff quickly became familiar with the new processes and could see the potential benefits for patients and the wider practice. Their willingness to embrace the change and share feedback during live use was invaluable to the assurance process.

We would also like to thank Paul from Enlivio Health, who provided practical training and support for the dispensary team. He worked closely with staff to answer questions and help resolve issues as they arose.

Introducing EPS into a dispensing doctor setting requires an understanding of how prescribing, dispensing and administrative processes work together. Close collaboration between practice teams, digital colleagues and system suppliers is essential.

For us, spending time in the practice and seeing these processes in use was an important part of assessing how the system supports safe, practical and effective use of EPS in this setting.

Thank you to everyone at Bodowen Surgery for their warm welcome, openness and enthusiasm, and for their commitment to extending the benefits of EPS to patients who use the practice dispensary.