What pharmacy options can patients see?
The pharmacy options available to patients depend on the configuration of your practice's NHSE registration form. By default, pharmacy related questions are not included in the NHSE national registration form. To enable these options, your practice must access the NHS Profile Manager and manually turn on the pharmacy questions.
For more detailed guidance on configuring your NHSE form, please refer to our article on configurable questions in the NHSE form 🤓.
💊 Direct Dispensing (for dispensing surgeries)
If your practice is a dispensing surgery, you can ask patients whether they would like to receive their medicines or medical aids directly from your surgery.
To qualify for this service, patients must meet certain eligibility criteria, including:
Preference: They must want to receive their medicines or medical aids directly from the surgery.
Location: They must live more than 1 mile (1.6 km) away from their nearest pharmacy.
Accessibility: They must have serious difficulty getting to their nearest pharmacy.
Based on their responses, the system will inform them of:
Ineligibility: If they do not meet the criteria.
Potential eligibility: If they may qualify, and your practice may discuss the service with them further.
We follow the Dispensing Catchment Area rules: Patients living more than 1 mile (1.6 km) away from a pharmacy are eligible to be dispensing patients.
🏥 Nominating a Pharmacy
You can ask patients if they would like to nominate a pharmacy for their prescriptions.
If they choose 'yes' they will be prompted to:
Choose pharmacy type: Indicate if they prefer an online or high-street pharmacy.
Search for a high-street pharmacy: Use a postcode lookup to find and select a local pharmacy.
Register with an online pharmacy: Directly nominate an online pharmacy.
❗️ Keep current pharmacy
If the both the option to nominate a pharmacy as well as dispensing is turned off (or the patient is not eligible for dispensing), the clinical system will automatically carry over the patient’s previously recorded nominated pharmacy.
✅ Where can I check/change my pharmacy settings?
To enable or modify pharmacy related questions on the NHSE registration form, refer to NHSE’s support article on turning on additional questions: How to Turn on Optional Extra Questions
For a complete list of all the questions on the NHSE registration form, visit the NHS England Registration Questions.