Isle of Wight Pharmacies - Importance of checking nhs.net shared mailbox every day

Isle of Wight CCG and the Isle of Wight NHS Trust are requesting that all community pharmacies on the island ensure that their pharmacy teams have the knowledge to access their NHS shared mail accounts every day. This is particularly important at the weekend and during Bank Holiday periods when urgent prescriptions are required for patients that have been seen by the on-duty team at Urgent Care Services.

The UCS coordinator recently made phone calls to pharmacies prior to sending an emailed prescription and found that in some cases the pharmacy team in on that day did not know how to access the NHS shared mail account. This resulted in a delay to the prescription being available to dispense, as it had to be physically hand delivered later in the day. Note: UCS are no longer authorised to FAX prescriptions for data protection reasons (GDPR).

ACTION REQUESTED:

Please can you ensure that your pharmacy team know how to access the nhs.net shared e-mail account as this is a quick and safe way to notify you of an urgent prescription (especially important at weekends). It would be most beneficial for the majority of pharmacies on the island to be able to dispense urgent medication during 'GP out of hours times' to offer as wide and convenient option for patients at their times of need.

CPSC would appreciate as wide a compliance as possible to meet the requirements of this request. It’s important that we can all communicate patient information safely and effectively between healthcare providers when we need to, to provide patient care when and where it is required.