Community pharmacies across the UK are “still working though backlogs” caused by the global IT outages that caused havoc last week, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) told C+D today (July 22).
On Friday, pharmacies using EMIS ProScript electronic prescription service (EPS) system experienced issues as the tech was affected by an update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, according to BBC reports.
Read more: Pharmacies face return of paper prescriptions amid 'global IT outages'
Some pharmacists were faced with GPs resorting to writing paper prescriptions while others - like Newdays Pharmacy group owner Olivier Picard - received “no prescriptions” at all on Friday or Saturday, he told C+D today.
Today, NPA chair Nick Kaye said that he expected “service in some community pharmacies to be slower than usual” as “pharmacists recover from last week… and catch up on the backlog of prescriptions”.
He added that pharmacies “may still be prioritising emergency prescriptions from their local GP surgeries as well as experiencing increased demand”.
Read more: ‘No straightforward solution’: GP tech issue causes pharmacy ‘confusion’
Meanwhile, the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) said that it recognised “the disruption that has been caused and the impact this has had especially on community pharmacies”.
“As always, we can be contacted for advice about how to maintain our standards for pharmacy professionals and pharmacies,” it added.
And Community Pharmacy England (CPE) this morning said that NHS England (NHSE) and EMIS had advised affected users that systems were “back online” and that the IT provider was “working to confirm that everything is working as expected”.
“Playing catch up”
Picard told C+D that despite IT systems being “back to normal” today, his pharmacy team are expecting a deluge of work.
“We’re bracing ourselves for the next couple of days to be very busy because we are going to have to play catchup,” he said.
He added that on Friday, the pharmacy group had “no connection” to the NHS spine and was “unable to download prescriptions”, as well as receiving less than expected in medicine deliveries from wholesalers.
Read more: GPs switch off update patient record function in new Pharmacy First IT twist
“By and large, our local surgery was able to see the majority of patients in need of emergency prescription…[but] for people with long list of prescriptions, they were asked to wait,” he told C+D.
“As early as this afternoon or more likely tomorrow, we will be receiving the volume that we would normally get on a Monday [or] Tuesday with the volume from last Friday” – a day Picard said is usually busier as “Friday tends to be a day when people work from home so they go to town and collect their prescription”.
“Big massive backlog”
Pharmacist and co-owner of Imaan Healthcare Mark Bartley told C+D today that “Friday was a big problem because [no electronic prescriptions] came through all day”.
“Saturday was much similar, only a small amount came through [and] it was a very minimal amount we were able to do,” he said.
Read more: IT chaos left 3/4 of pharmacies unable to complete Pharmacy First consultations
“Then this morning, it’s started to resume – I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily fully back to normal but we have had quite a few this morning,” he added.
He told C+D that “if there is a big massive backlog to still come through, certainly by the end of the week we should be back up to normal”.
“Higher volume of queries”
And Kamsons pharmacy operations manager Paul Antenen told C+D today that “none of [the chain’s] pharmacies were able to download electronic prescriptions for the majority of the day on Friday”.
“Our pharmacy teams also dealt with a higher-than-normal volume of queries as patients were diverted from their surgeries to us,” he added.
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After getting systems “up and running by the end of Friday”, Antenen said he anticipated “being busier later in the week as the GPs get up to date and clear their backlog of prescription requests”.
“The majority of our customers were understanding and patient, helped by the widespread reporting on the news,” he added.
“Minimal effect”
But non-EMIS pharmacies told C+D that they were not particularly affected by the IT outages.
“The outages had a minimal effect on our day-to-day pharmacy activities as our dispensary [patient medication record (PMR) systems] are provided by Cegedim,” Weldricks Pharmacy Group director of operations David Vanns told C+D today.
“All of our hub, web and online systems remained working as normal,” he said.
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“All of our supply chain systems were working normally too - we have not noticed any delays in stock order fulfilment from our key suppliers either during or since the outages,” he added.
And while the pharmacy’s card payment system “went down for one day”, he added that “this was not too troublesome as most customers were understanding and were able to make payments in cash”.
It comes after Community Pharmacy Scotland (CPS) said earlier this month that there is “no straightforward solution” to an issue with “a particular version of the ‘Vision’ GP prescribing system”.
