NHS England has announced that nearly 1,500 high street chemists – including every Boots in England – are now offering the service, which enables patients to check on their prescriptions through real-time ‘Amazon-style’ updates.
Almost half (45%) of phone calls to community pharmacies are estimated to be from patients asking if their prescription is ready, with the new service helping to free up time for pharmacists to provide advice to patients.
Instead of phoning up, patients can instead track their prescriptions by logging in to the app to see if their medicines are “ready to collect” or “dispatched by pharmacy” if they are being delivered.
The service is expected to be made available to nearly 5,000 more pharmacies over the next 12 months – covering 60% of those in England.
Dr Vin Diwakar, Clinical Transformation Director at NHS England, said: “We know that people want more control over how they manage their healthcare and the new prescription tracking feature in the NHS App offers exactly that.
“You will now get a near real-time update in the app that lets you know when your medicine is ready so you can avoid unnecessary trips or leaving it until the last minute to collect.
“The new Amazon-style feature will also help to tackle the administrative burden on pharmacists, so that they can spend more of their time providing health services and advice to patients rather than updates on the status of their prescriptions.”
