Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) Nomination

Nomination is the process of patients selecting, or nominating, a dispensing contractor, for example, a pharmacy, to which all their prescriptions are sent via Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) Release 2 Phase 3. This removes the need for most patients to visit their GP practice to collect a paper prescription.

Note - Patients do not have to nominate a dispensing contractor, but if they do not, prescriptions cannot be digitally signed and Vision 3 reverts to producing a bar coded prescription which must be manually signed.

Patients can choose to nominate up to three dispensing contractors at any one time, including:

  • A Community Pharmacy
  • A Dispensing Appliance Contractor
  • One Dispensing GP practice (if eligible), you cannot record the nomination of a dispensing GP in Vision 3 unless you are the dispensing GP practice.

Patients can only nominate EPS dispensing contractors to receive their electronic prescriptions. You can assist the patient by searching for such contractors within Vision 3, see Adding and Updating an EPS Nomination for details.

Please note the following:

  • If a patient has a Nominated Pharmacy set up it is selected by default, any Preferred Pharmacy details recorded are no longer used.
  • If a patient does not have a Nominated Pharmacy, their recorded Preferred Pharmacy details are used by default.
  • If the Preferred Pharmacy differs from the Nominated Pharmacy, an alert displays to enable you to notify the patient of the change. Once the patient is informed remove the alert and the Preferred Pharmacy is updated to match the Nominated Pharmacy.

Training Tips:

  • Preferred Pharmacy - Used to record the patients’ preference for their paper prescriptions, see Adding a Preferred Pharmacy for details.
  • EPS Nominated Dispensers is used to record the patients’ preference for their electronic prescriptions, this is added by the practice or pharmacy and is transmitted via the NHS Spine.
  • The patients pharmacy preferences can be viewed from Consultation Manager - Patient Details - Preferences.

  • If an EPS nomination is received that differs from the Preferred Pharmacy an EPS Nomination Mismatch message displays in the Alerts pane.

See Adding and Updating an EPS Nomination and EPS Nomination Messages for further details.
Note – To print this topic select Print in the top right corner and follow the on-screen prompts.