Rockliffe Court Surgery

After many years of accepting repeat prescriptions over the telephone, following meetings with partners and a discussion with the patient participation group, we have reluctantly taken the decision to stop taking prescription requests over the telephone from 1 January 2019.

The first and most important reason is safety. We are experiencing an increasing number of discrepancies between what the patient states they have ordered and what has been ordered. Mistakes are likely due to confusion with drug name pronunciation and it has been shown that four out of every 100 telephone calls contain errors in the information received during a telephone request. These mistakes can be serious and detrimental to a patient’s health.

The practice is becoming busier and busier, with more people on repeat medication for ever increasing complex conditions. The decision to stop the taking of prescriptions over the telephone was made to minimise the risk of a potential error causing a significant event.

We hope in making this change it will free up our phone line to patients contacting us for other queries and also allow our medical receptionists to process repeat prescription requests without disturbance.

As a consequence of the above, we confirm that from 1 January 2019 the practice will not be taking prescription requests over the telephone.

You can request your repeat medication by the following methods:

• Using the repeat slip (the right-hand side of the green prescription) - ticking the items you need to order and handing this slip into the practice or posting it in the box outside the surgery.
• Set up repeat dispensing which issues 6 to 12 months of scripts automatically without the need to order.
• Use the NHS App
• Order online - sign up for system online this also enables you to make appointments and send messages.
• Use e-consult on the front page of the practice website
• Use email rockliffe.prescriptions@nhs.net – on your first use we will reply with a template for future use.

For patients who cannot attend and do not have access to the internet the repeat slip can either be posted to us or we will be happy to set up repeat dispensing whereby scripts are issued automatically. We will be contacting those patients proactively to offer this service over the next 2 months.

We fully appreciate that this decision will not be popular with some patients, but we hope that you will understand that safety is of paramount importance.

This practice is encouraged by NHS England and is now the normal practice in Darlington.
Please note that this will not alter the time it takes to process repeat prescription which is two working days.