Repeat Prescriptions
Repeat Prescriptions
What are Repeat Prescriptions?
The frequent issuing of the same medications for long-term conditions without the need for ongoing GP appointments to obtain them.
Virtual Pharmacist provides a safe, efficient, and financially sustainable repeat prescribing service. This supports practices and ICBs in reducing medicines waste, improving formulary compliance and optimising patient safety. Our cohort of pharmacists handle and streamline the process of routine repeat authorisations, escalating only when GP involvement is a clinical necessity.
How Will This Help My Practice?
Our trained pharmacists review, authorise, optimise and streamline repeat prescriptions using integrated decision-support tools. This delivers a clinically robust and cost-efficient service.
Enhances patient safety and safeguarding
Reviewing any required monitoring, interactions, risks and dependencies.
Saving money and resources for practices and ICBs
Reducing over-ordering and duplicate supplies.
Streamlining repeat workloads
Transitioning suitable patients onto electronic Repeat Dispensing (eRD).
Safety monitoring for high-risk medicines prescriptions
Including opioids, DOACs and insulin.
All decisions are coded, documented and auditable
Supporting CQC inspections and demonstrating safe prescribing.
Significantly reducing GP workloads
Handling most routine repeat authorisations.
How Does Virtual Pharmacist Work?
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do pharmacists ensure safety when authorising repeat prescriptions?
Our team of trained pharmacists carefully review and consider each repeat prescription request. Checks are carried out for any monitoring requirements, medicine interactions, indicators of dependency or misuse risks, appropriate doses, and any potential patterns of early or excessive ordering.
This safeguards patients by ensuring they receive only the most suitable and appropriate repeat prescriptions, tailored to their individual care needs.
Can you optimise repeat medication lists?
Yes, our pharmacists are capable of tidying up repeat prescriptions within practice systems. Our team can:
- Remove any discontinued or recalled items
- Correct acute to repeat prescription mismatches
- Update medicine quantities to reduce waste
- Align treatment plans with national guidelines
- Identify describing needs
- Switch medications to formulary-approved options
How does this service save money for practices and ICBs?
Our team actively and routinely monitors patient requirements, recalls, and national guidelines. This focused approach allows us to significantly reduce prescribed medicines that are over-ordered, duplicated, unnecessary, or no longer required. This alone delivers substantial cost savings by reducing waste in practices and ICBs.
Our pharmacists also work to correct expensive non-formulary choices, implement ScriptSwitch or OptimiseRx recommended alternatives, and enable eRD to reduce processing and community pharmacy workloads. All of these are huge efforts taken to simultaneously significantly reduce workloads and save money.
How does Virtual Pharmacist use ScriptSwitch or equivalent tools?
Our pharmacists review and apply any recommendations flagged by ScriptSwitch, OptimiseRx, or local ICB decision-support platforms. These tools ensure:
- Formulary and pathway compliance
- Cost-effective medicine choices
- Safer product choices
- Avoidance of non-preferred brands
- Identification of substitution and switch opportunities
- Alerting to interactions, contraindications, or dose issues
