Challenges caused by last week’s IT outages have only added to the pressures community pharmacy teams already face, The Pharmacist has been told.

Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has confirmed that the issues, which affected GP and pharmacy systems and patient records access, have now been 'resolved on the whole’.

But community pharmacy teams are still dealing with the backlog of prescriptions that were unable to be processed on Friday and over the weekend, they have told The Pharmacist.

While GPs have called for compensation for additional workload caused by the outage, community pharmacy leaders have reiterated existing concerns around core funding, workload pressures and patient abuse.

And the issues have highlighted the value of bricks and mortar pharmacies and the potential for community pharmacy to do more.

'We are seeing an influx of prescriptions'

Olivier Picard, vice-chair of the National Pharmacy Association (NPA), told The Pharmacist that his pharmacy teams were ‘getting back to normal’, but still dealing with a backlog of prescriptions to process.

‘Now that most surgeries are back up and running, it just means that we are seeing an influx of prescriptions from Friday and Monday's requests,’ he said.

‘It's hard enough as it is doing one day's work in a day.’

And while Friday was a quieter day in terms of how many prescriptions were dispensed, he said pharmacy teams were ‘now paying the price for it’ with increased workload this week.

Mr Picard said he was trying to avoid asking staff to work overtime to manage the backlog, instead prioritising urgent prescriptions and working through the rest throughout the week.

And he said he was trying to ‘manage patients expectations’ that the pharmacy may not be back to normal running until the end of the week.

As well as being unaffordable, due to the sector’s current funding package, asking staff to work overtime ‘seems unfair’, Mr Picard said.

‘My pharmacy team, they really work really hard, as I'm sure many most pharmacy teams [do] around the country, [they’re] working flat out,’ he said.

‘I just find it difficult to say we all need to stay till midnight to play catch up.’

And he voiced concerns that if pharmacy teams were being asked to ‘work harder, faster’, whether this might lead to increased errors.

But the added workload was still making pharmacy teams’ work environment ‘more stressful than it currently is’, at an already busy time of year where people might already be requesting extra medication around going on holiday.

'I had a patient banging his fist on the desk to say “I need my medicine now”

Mr Picard also said that the delays to medication were ‘frustrating’, particularly since most patients have had to wait over the weekend for their GP surgery to reopen today.

‘On Saturday… I had a patient literally banging his fist on the desk to say “I need my medicine now”.

‘We're not here to receive abuse. It is very difficult to sort of deal with that sort of situation and try to calm the patient down and say we're doing everything we can,’ Mr Picard said.

And he suggested that lessons could be learned about the potential to expand community pharmacy services ‘which would mean that actually patients could have been seen without being pushed from pillar to post over the weekend’.

Nick Kaye, NPA chair, told The Pharmacist that community pharmacy teams had been ‘working really hard to try and make sure that people have their medicines’.

In Cornwall, for instance, he said community pharmacies were able to supply medicines through the area’s walk-in emergency supply scheme.

But he said ‘it’s not been easy’, highlighting issues like medicine delivery delays exacerbated by pre-existing cashflow concerns that meant most community pharmacies were ordering stock at the point of need.

While GPs have called to be compensated for the additional workload caused by the IT outages, Mr Kaye said he thought there was ‘a bigger question’ around the level of funding for community pharmacy overall, rather than focusing on one specific instance.

IT outage 'an example of why brick and mortar pharmacy matters so much’

Bristol community pharmacist Ade Williams said there had been ‘good coordination’ with other local partners in responding to the IT issues, which took out most GP and some pharmacy systems on Friday, preventing electronic prescriptions in England from being filed and dispensed.

And he said he thought the sector’s response to the crisis was ‘an example of why the face to face interactions of brick and mortar pharmacy matters so much’.

In particular, he shared how he had been able to reassure worried patients who had already been facing issues and delays with their medication.

‘There is a lot of health anxiety out there,’ he said.

And he added that community pharmacy’s place as ‘the most accessible part of the NHS system’ was ‘not just a token’ but ‘an integral presence into the working of the NHS’.

Mr Williams also highlighted the resourcefulness of community pharmacists in ensuring patient safety amid limitations, such as being unable to access patient records.

He suggested that community pharmacists were ‘experts’ in ‘being able to innovate solutions, managing care without requiring external support, delivering safe quality care, using the frameworks available to us’.

And he said Friday’s crisis ‘makes the case again about how important it is for pharmacies to have more agency’, including around helping patients to manage prescriptions.

Patient safety 'at the heart of pharmacy profession' even amid disruption

Jay Badenhorst, director of pharmacy at the Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDA), also praised the 'resilience and dedication' of the pharmacist workforce, as they 'adapted quickly to manual processes, prioritised urgent prescriptions and extended their working hours to mitigate the impact of the outage on those in need of medication'.

'Their efforts exemplify the vital role pharmacists play in healthcare, demonstrating that even in the face of technological disruptions, the safety and well-being of patients remain at the heart of the pharmacy profession,' he told The Pharmacist. 

‘Not the first time that pharmacy teams have been affected by IT problems outside of their control’

According to an update posted by CPE today, IT provider EMIS has advised its affected users that services impacted by the global IT issues are now back online (such as the EMIS Web GP IT system and EMIS ProScript Connect).

It said that EMIS is working to confirm that everything is working as expected, and that NHS England has also advised that ‘systems are now back online’.

Alastair Buxton, CPE director of NHS services, told The Pharmacist that while EMIS had communicated that ‘issues with their systems are now resolved on the whole’, CPE encouraged any pharmacies still experiencing problems to contact their supplier.

‘Whilst the initial impact of the outage is now over, it will take time for the resulting backlog of workload to be cleared, as electronic prescriptions start to flow again.

‘This is not the first time that pharmacy teams have been adversely affected by IT problems outside of their control and they are often on the receiving end of public frustration.

‘Community Pharmacy England continues to seek to ensure that the sector is appropriately supported and their efforts recognised when situations such as this occur.’