Health Professionals
4th March 2009
Practitioner Services has identified that Acute Medication Service (AMS) prescriptions are being submitted for re-imbursement with duplicate barcodes. Following an investigation, it would appear that some of the duplicate bar code prescriptions are as a result of the use of the GP IT system prescription re-print functionality. The re-print may be being used as a convenient mechanism to create a further identical prescription for the patient, for example if a double prescription was required if the patient was going on holiday.
When the reprint function is used, the same barcode will be printed on the prescription as on the original form, however, only a single electronic prescription message will have been generated. This means that only a single message is available when requested in the pharmacy to support both prescriptions.
This reprint facility is intended to enable a new prescription to be recreated should there be a problem with the original prescription making it unusable. This facility is not intended to allow further prescribing of the same items and MUST NOT be used for this purpose.
If a repeat prescription is required, the original process should be followed, which in turn will generate a new prescription with a new and unique UPN.
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