Cancelling an electronic prescription

An electronic prescription can be cancelled by staff at any prescribing organisation (such as GP surgery or hospital out-patient clinic) who have the correct authorisation on their smartcard.

Cancelling an electronic prescription is done within your IT system - for guidance on where this might be, please refer to your system supplier.

Depending on your IT system, it may or may not be possible to cancel individual items from a multi-item prescription. GP practices and community sites using GP systems are able to cancel individual prescription items. However, in secondary care, it is not possible and the whole script must be cancelled.

If something needs to be changed, either the prescription or individual item must be cancelled (this will depend on your system) and a new prescription should be generated. The pharmacy and/or the patient should be informed of any changes to avoid confusion.

Cancelling a repeat dispensing (batch) prescription is available for GP practices and community sites using GP systems, but batch prescribing is not currently available in secondary care.

If a prescriber cancels a repeat dispensing (batch) prescription, all outstanding prescription issues that have not been downloaded by the dispenser will be cancelled. It is also possible to cancel individual items on batch prescriptions.

Pharmacists are not able to cancel prescriptions. Instead, they will return the prescription to the Spine and contact the prescriber directly to request a cancellation. There may be occasions when a pharmacist will choose to mark a prescription as ‘Not Dispensed’ instead of returning it to the Spine for cancellation. This may happen when the pharmacist, in their professional opinion, believes that the patient could come to harm if the prescriber is not able to cancel the prescription in a timely way when it is returned to the Spine.

If the prescription is not cancelled, it will remain on the Spine. The prescription will be available to another pharmacy, should the patient either change their nominated pharmacy or attend another pharmacy and request the prescription is downloaded.

When a prescription is marked as ‘Not Dispensed’ it is no longer available for download from the Spine. 

The pharmacy team should still communicate to the prescriber that the patient has not received the medication, as there is no automated notification process to the prescribing organisation.

When a prescriber attempts to cancel a prescription, they will receive 1 of 3 possible responses from the system. 

1. 'Prescription cancelled successfully'

A 'prescription cancelled successfully' response confirms that the prescription has been cancelled.

In this case, a new electronic prescription can be generated, signed, and sent to the patient's nominated pharmacy. The patient does not need to return to the prescribing organisation (such as GP practice). The prescriber can add additional notes to the prescription to give the dispenser and/or patient more information. Dispensers are notified of cancellations when they attempt to retrieve the electronic prescription.  

The EPS Prescription Tracker status will show as 'cancelled' and the pharmacy will not be able to download the prescription. 

2. 'Cancellation unsuccessful with dispenser'

A 'cancellation unsuccessful with dispenser' response confirms that the patient's nominated pharmacy has already downloaded the prescription from the NHS Spine.

In this case, the prescriber will not be able to cancel the prescription and should contact the dispenser (contact details will be displayed on the screen) and discuss the next steps. The dispenser can return the prescription to the Spine, where it will be automatically cancelled, or the dispenser can mark the prescription as 'Not dispensed'. 

The EPS Prescription Tracker status will show as 'With dispenser'. 

If the whole prescription has been cancelled it will not be available for download or dispensing. If an item(s) on the prescription has been cancelled but there are items that still need to be dispensed, the prescription can be downloaded again when the pharmacy re-scans the token barcode; the cancelled items will be marked as such and will not be available for dispensing.

3. 'Cancellation unsuccessful dispensed'

A 'cancellation unsuccessful dispensed' response confirms that the prescription has already been dispensed to the patient.

In this case, it is the responsibility of the person cancelling to ensure the patient is informed and next steps are explained. For example, the patient could be asked to return to their pharmacy to collect a new prescription.