Patients asked to help relieve pressure on medicine and community pharmacy teams

09th June 2022 - 2:28 PM

Haxby Group patients are being asked to give plenty of notice when ordering repeat prescriptions, to help support our medicine teams with issuing prescriptions fairly.

Medicine and community pharmacy teams are being inundated with last-minute, urgent medication requests and duplicate requests which are having a severe impact on waiting times for routine prescriptions.

Gema Dunmore, Lead for Medicines Optimisation at Haxby Group York said: “Over recent months we have found many of our patients are not giving enough time when ordering their repeat prescriptions; requesting urgently when they have already run out or requesting with very little notice and then putting in a duplicate request when it is not ready.”

In York routine prescription requests are usually processed within three days, with medicines that require a review or that are of an acute nature taking between four to seven days to process, as they are more complex. Patients in Hull and Scarborough face a similar processing time. 

Gema added: “we have a constant flow of urgent requests for prescriptions that arrive for processing the same day, this and the duplicate requests are having a huge impact on our already overwhelmed service, creating delays across the board both in the practice and at your nominated pharmacy.”

Now Haxby Group are calling on patients to support their local medicines optimisation teams by following these steps:

• Order early: check when your medicines are going to run out and order your repeat prescription with, at the very least, three days notice (ideally seven). If you are a patient in York, you can order your prescription 14 days in advance. 

• Don’t duplicate: if you think your medicine will not be issued on time, please do not submit a duplicate request or call the surgery. Check the order status of your prescription using the NHS App or directly with your nominated community pharmacy.

• Know when your medicine review is due: typically, when starting on a long-term, repeat prescription you will be told how often it will be reviewed or it will be visible on the NHS App or paper repeat slip. To reduce disruption to your medicine supply, request a review in plenty of time using our online contact form: www.haxbygroup.co.uk/contact

Finally, Gema added: “by patients working with us to submit their requests in plenty of time, not duplicating requests, and keeping on top of medicine reviews, we can make sure that no-one faces delays.”

The NHS App is the quickest and easiest way to order your repeat prescription. For patients not yet using the app they can order by dropping in their repeats slip to the pharmacy or using Systemonline. Haxby Group do not take prescription requests over the phone.