What is Electronic Repeat Dispensing (eRD)?
If you or someone you care for, use the same medicine regularly, you may be able to benefit from electronic repeat dispensing of your repeat prescriptions. This means you won’t have to re-order or collect your repeat prescriptions from your GP practice every time you need more medicine.
How does eRD work?
Your GP sends a series of repeat prescriptions to your pharmacy in one go, so there’s no need for you to order them each time. It’s reliable, secure, and confidential. Your regular prescriptions are stored securely on the NHS database, so they’ll be ready at the pharmacy each time you need them.
Benefits of eRD:
- save time by avoiding unnecessary trips or calls to your GP every time you need to order a repeat prescription.
- order or cancel your repeat prescriptions online.
- pick up your repeat prescriptions directly from your pharmacy without having to visit your GP.
- spend less time waiting for your prescription in the pharmacy or GP practice.
- You won’t need a paper prescription to collect your medicine from the pharmacy.
Is eRD suitable for me?
Any patient with a repeat prescription could be suitable for electronic repeat dispensing, especially if you have/are:
- on stable therapy
- with long-term conditions
- on multiple therapies, e.g. for hypertension, diabetes, asthma etc.
- self-managed seasonal conditions.
eRD is unsuitable in the following situations:
- Complex medication regimes
- Medicines requiring frequent changes to drug therapy.
- Unstable medical condition and/or recent history of frequent admissions to hospital.
- Those requiring regular review (3 monthly or more frequent)
- Those requiring terminal/palliative care.
- Those in residential institutions, e.g. care homes.
- Those who decline to consent or nominate a pharmacy.
- People who are drug misusers
eRD is unsuitable for people on the following medications:
- controlled drugs (including temazepam, tramadol, gabapentin and pregabalin).
- Benzodiazepines
- Hypnotics
- drugs which require close and careful monitoring, e.g. methotrexate
- unlicensed medicines
How do I sign up for eRD?
It’s really easy to sign up for eRD – just ask your GP or pharmacist to set it up for you.