Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) system (FOI)

​​Request

The Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) system replaced paper prescriptions with electronic submissions earlier this month.

Health and Community Services (HCS) said that the new system follows a pilot scheme last year and means that patients no longer have to drop off paper prescriptions at the General Hospital which has reduced hospital pharmacy queues and administrative errors. 

Deputy Medical Director Simon West said that the pilot scheme reduced errors arising from misinterpretation of handwritten prescriptions and alerted clinicians to risks arising from different types of medication interacting with each other.

He explained: “Between March 2023 [when the pilot scheme started] and April 2024, the total number of outpatient items prescribed on EPMA was 44,000. 

“During this time, the system has prevented 3,300 duplicate prescriptions, alerted clinicians to 1,500 significant drug interactions, and on 100 occasions stopped a drug being prescribed that the patient was significantly allergic to.”

Please provide the following data from the General Hospital pharmacy over the past five years so that the figures cna be compared  to the data given by Mr West:-

A

Number of out-patient items prescribed.

B

Number of duplicate prescriptions.

C

Number of significant drug interactions.

D

Instances of a drug being prescribed that the patient was significantly allergic to​.

Response

In the 12-month period preceding this Freedom of Information request, from May 2023 to April 2024, Health and Community Services Pharmacy recorded 120,975 items prescribed to outpatients through either electronic prescribing or paper prescriptions. 

Electronic prescribing through the EPMA system was initially trialled in limited clinics, and constituted less than 50% of outpatient prescriptions prior to the start of 2024. As of June 2024, electronic prescribing is utilised for approximately 80% of outpatient prescriptions.

Previous year figures for items prescribed to outpatients are detailed in the table below. 

Data excludes items dispensed to other patient groups, including inpatient medications and take-home prescriptions for patients being discharged.

Prior to the introduction of the Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) system,  duplicate prescriptions, drug interactions and allergy risks would be addressed and rectified as identified by Pharmacy professionals through screening and checking procedures, however they were not recorded centrally. As such, the remaining information requested is not available to report from a central record, and Article 3 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies. 

Article applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.​