Homecare medicines services need electronic prescribing and access to records, report urges

A report by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) has called for homecare medicines services to move to a fully electronic prescription service and end the use of paper prescriptions.

In the report, published on 17 April 2025, the regulator suggested there would be “significant benefits from moving away entirely from paper-based systems, and making sure there is compatibility between the digital systems being used”.

Between May and September 2024, the GPhC inspected 20 pharmacies that provide homecare medicines services and found that while every pharmacy inspected met all the regulator’s standards, they experienced a range of challenges providing homecare services — many of which were “outside of the immediate control of the pharmacy”.

The report said that paper prescriptions issued by hospitals caused delays and extra workload compared to electronic prescriptions.

However, the GPhC found that most pharmacies that it inspected said that less than 5% of the prescriptions it received were sent electronically.

The report has called upon the UK’s respective national health organisations to prioritise and deliver efforts towards the electronic transfer of prescriptions and recommends that services should move away entirely from paper-based systems.

The GPhC also said it would be “beneficial” for pharmacies providing homecare services to be able to access patients’ clinical records.

It found that pharmacies did independent clinical checks during the dispensing process; however, “restrictions with patient record sharing processes between the hospitals and the pharmacies” made it difficult for the pharmacy to resolve any clinical queries that arose during the checking process, the report said.

The regulator has also recommended that UK national health organisations should facilitate steps to ensure that homecare pharmacy teams have the same access to clinical systems as other parts of patients’ care team.

This equal access to clinical systems would mean that “pharmacists and pharmacy teams working in homecare pharmacies have up-to-date information”, the report said.

Roz Gittins, chief pharmacy officer at the GPhC, commented: “Our findings highlight the systems pharmacies have developed to reduce the impact of these challenges, but further work is required to ensure patients always receive their medicines when they need them. 

“We recognise this requires more industry-wide collaboration, and we encourage all organisations involved with the provision of homecare medicines services to support their teams to embrace new and improved ways of working for the benefit of patients.”

In January 2024, the government rejected several recommendations made in a House of Lords report into homecare medicines services published in 2023, which only covered England.

A review of Scottish homecare medicine services was carried out by Alison Strath, chief pharmaceutical officer for Scotland, and published in March 2025, following reports of poor standards of care in the sector.

Commenting on the GPhC report, Claire Anderson, president of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), said: “With continued pressures on pharmacy teams, our evidence to the House of Lords report called for pharmacy homecare teams to get the funding and resources they need to provide a quality, consistent service for patients.

 “We will review the report’s wider system recommendations with interest to identify how we can best support.”

In February 2024, the RPS published updated professional standards for homecare services, for teams involved in the planning, commissioning and delivering of homecare services across the UK.

A spokesperson for the Welsh government said: “We welcome this report and are currently implementing the electronic prescription service across Wales, which will enable pharmacies providing homecare services to access electronic prescriptions.

“We support the principle of appropriate access to health records for pharmacies and already provide all pharmacies in Wales who offer clinical services with access to the full Welsh GP record.”

The Scottish and Westminster governments were contacted for comment.