NHS rolls out 'Amazon style' service so patients can get their medicines

Hundreds of thousands of NHS patients have started using a new “Amazon-style” service via its app so people can track their prescriptions.

NHS England says 400,000 are using the tracking feature ten weeks after it was launched and health chiefs are calling on more to follow suit. It provides near real-time updates in the app that lets you know when your medicine is ready so you can avoid unnecessary trips or leaving it until the last minute to collect. It comes after five million patients had a consultation with their pharmacist instead of their GP since an NHS scheme to take pressure off family doctors.

Currently around 45% of phone calls to community pharmacies are from people chasing prescriptions and the feature has been hailed by pharmacists as a “game changer” in freeing up their time to see more patients.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “We are driving the reform necessary to make the NHS as easy and convenient to use as doing your shopping or banking online.

“Nearly 400,000 people are already using our new prescription tracker through the NHS App because it saves them time and hassle – no more queuing up at the pharmacy only to find their medicines aren't ready and no more time-consuming phone calls with pharmacy staff. Get the NHS App now - track your prescriptions, skip the in-person lines, and free up both yours and your pharmacist’s time.”

Since the launch 4.4 million people have viewed their prescription in the app, with 394,000 also using the app’s new tracking feature to check whether their prescription was ready.

Around 1,650 high street chemists – including every Boots in England – are now offering the service, which enables patients to check if their medicines are “ready to collect” or “dispatched by pharmacy” if they are being delivered. The service is also expected to expand to almost 5,000 pharmacies over the next 12 months.

Ryan’s Pharmacy in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, is the second busiest pharmacy dispensary in Yorkshire fulfilling more than 30,000 prescription items each month. Previously the online pharmacy needed five phonelines to field all the calls from patients with prescription enquiries, but since integrating with the NHS App, phone calls have dropped by around 80%.

Pharmacist Yasif Salim said: “We thought the lines must have gone down at first. Normally the phones ring off their hooks with patients asking for updates on their prescriptions. A normal day for us is noisy.

“Before the digital prescription updates were available on the NHS App the phone would ring constantly. And when it wasn’t ringing, we were just waiting for it to happen. Some days it felt quite stressful and overwhelming. Some nights I went to sleep and dreamt of the phones ringing. And I know that feeling ran across the whole team.

“The beauty of it is that in pharmacy we didn’t need to do anything. There wasn’t any switch on preparations that we needed to make, and it didn’t add any additional steps into the dispensing process. We could just carry on as usual and everything was handled by Pharmacy Manager.”

Health service data suggests the NHS app has 37.4 million registered users, with an average of 11.4 million people using it to manage their healthcare every month. The app also allows patients to use a barcode to collect their prescription.

Some 61.5 million repeat prescriptions have been ordered via the NHS App in the last 12 months – a 46% increase on the previous year. There were also 87.4 million views of patient test results during the same period.

Dr Vin Diwakar, Clinical Transformation Director at NHS England, said: “It’s brilliant that so many people are making use of the new Amazon-style tracking feature in the NHS App, which means you can now be sure your prescription is ready before setting off to the chemist.

“For those who rely on regular prescriptions, the tracker offers near real-time updates on when their medicines are ready, like you can get for your online shopping, and this is all part of our shift to give people more control over their care through the NHS App.

“We’re seeing millions more people using the app to easily order repeat prescriptions and get faster access to their test results – I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t logged in for a while to take a look and see how the new features can help them manage their healthcare from wherever they are.”