Prescription ordering

Many of our incoming telephone calls and online queries each day relate to patients chasing up their prescription or asking if it has been done yet by the GP.  Around 18,000 of our patients (66%)  are on repeat medication and we receive anywhere from 300-500 requests a day.

Patients are encouraged to either order via the NHS App or your pharmacy which comes through straight to the prescriptions team. We do not take prescription requests over the telephone as this increases the risk of human error when going through patients medication.

Our routine prescription turnaround from ordering to approval is 5 working days (increasing to 7 working days over a bank holiday period) and we ask that patients order repeat medication no later than 7 days before needing them to allow both the GP and Pharmacy to provide the medication before you run out. We are finding an increasing amount of requests from patients who need medication urgently because they have either run out, or run out in the next day or two. This puts an enormous amount of pressure on the prescription clerk to manage incoming requests and could mean we miss the request in amongst our routine prescription orders.

Once the prescription is signed by our team, we have no knowledge about how long it will take the chemist to dispense it for you, this is down to the individual chemist. Many of these calls or queries we receive therefore result in no further information being able to be provided and patients directed back to their Pharmacy

You can track the progress of your prescription on the NHS App. This will give you the information you need about where in the process your prescription is and when it might be ready to collect.

For those who are able, please consider using these online methods to help keep the phone lines free for patients calling in to access help for other medical issues.

Thank you, CHMC