About Dispensing Practice » The Electronic Prescription Service » The DHSC is in denial over EPS funding
Continual assertions by the DHSC that the dispensing fee covers expenses such as the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) are wearing thin, the DDA has said in light of new dispensing fee analysis.
Across Great Britain, GP negotiators have made efforts to secure funding to implement the EPS in dispensing practice. In England, these have been met with denials by health minister Stephen Kinnock that the dispensing fee needs review. The stock party line, adopted by Kinnock and other MPs, is that the dispensing fee – inherently unchanged since 2012 – covers IT costs.
However, according to DDA calculations, in real terms, over the past decade (to 2025/26) the dispensing GP fee envelope in England has plunged 17.5 per cent and the average fee even further - at £1.58 versus £2.06, representing a 23.4 per cent drop. In Scotland, the dispensing fee is unchanged since 2002.
By contrast, despite also receiving a dispensing fee, community pharmacies in England received up to £1,250 per site in EPS setup funding. These pharmacies have also benefited from successive waves of digital investment, including robotic dispensing, barcode systems, and 24-hour prescription collection machines. Dispensing GP practices, however, have been excluded from these innovation funds
It is the view of the DDA that across Great Britain the need to address NHS funding for the EPS has never been more acute. In Scotland, the last of the three mainland home countries to develop electronic prescribing, the first prescriptions to be sent electronically will take place in the third quarter of 2028, the Scottish Government has just announced.
Setting out a timetable for development of the Scottish equivalent of the EPS for the first time, the Scottish Government confirmed at the end of June that it had taken “important steps forward” in the implementation of the Digital Prescribing and Dispensing Pathways programme (DPDP). Programme architects have also told stakeholders that there have been “substantial learnings” from engagement visits to NHS BSA in England, where the EPS operates. The DPDP team has also pledged similar visits to colleagues in Wales, where, they say, the EPS is on a scale more akin to that planned for Scotland.
As in England, both the DPDP in Scotland and the EPS in Wales have failed to consider from the outset arrangements for the 3.58 million dispensing patients that dispensing practices serve. The GPCs in England, Scotland and Wales, which are in regular dialogue with the DDA, say that addressing the exclusion of dispensing practices from their NHS electronic prescribing systems is recognised as an important negotiation point.
In its latest correspondence with the DDA, SGPC co-deputy chair Al Miles said there were tentative signs that dispensing practices could be included in the basic scope of the DPDP, although a programme spokesman said this was planned for a “future DPDP release”. A statement said that prioritisation of items would depend “on several factors, with guidance from Scottish Government sponsors”.
In Wales, the EPS is managed by Digital Health and Care Wales, and since 2023 is being introduced in phases, with full rollout to all communities in Wales expected by September 2027. As of September 2025, the service was live in over 70 per cent of community pharmacies and over 4.6 million prescription items had been successfully dispensed electronically.
Akin to their colleagues in England, Welsh dispensing practices find themselves in a situation where they are yet to receive NHS funding for dispensary EPS functionality. The DDA, which is part of the Welsh EPS development board, understands that proprietary dispensary EPS modules available in England (available for private purchase), are now being marketed in Wales - but are yet to be piloted.
Learnings from England
In England, since its introduction in 2019, the EPS has matured into a system typically handling well in excess of 90 million items a month. As of June 2026, around 81 per cent of patients had live EPS nominations with an EPS utilisation rate of 93.6 per cent.[1]
During 2025, DHSC started to roll out the EPS to secondary care in England, and at the beginning of 2026, it is understood that around 12.5 per cent of NHS Trusts now use the service for inpatient and community-based services, as well as discharge medications. A range of NHS providers also have access to the service, including child health services, community physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry, speech and language and sexual health services.
However, the difficulties faced by dispensing patients accessing the EPS are reflected in official NHS England statistics. These show that for dispensing practice in England, the EPS nomination rate for all (prescribing and dispensing) patients falls to 67 per cent, or around 500,000 items a month, reflecting the absence of dispensing patients.1
The EPS business case
For those able to access the EPS, the business case is clearly stated:
Building on the foundation of the EPS, DHSC has developed the NHS App and roll out of new patient services such as an Amazon-style NHS prescription tracking service, reducing the time spent by dispensers and patients on checking the status of the prescription. In its launch press release NHS England estimated that almost half (45 per cent) of phone calls to community pharmacies are from patients asking if their prescription is ready.
For community dispensers, the EPS will also facilitate the development of hub and spoke dispensing models, said by the DHSC to increase dispensing efficiencies and free up time for ‘spoke’ team members.
The EPS has also supported the development of online pharmacies and NHS data for 2024-25 counts 430 pharmacies trading as distance-selling operators, with most located in Yorkshire and the Northeast where dispensing practices proliferate.[2] Weekly NHS EPS nomination data showed that the top three operators account for 35 per cent of all EPS nominations.[3]
The development of online pharmacies has not been without criticism at the highest levels. In 2026, the 2026-27 GP contract for England was amended to prevent abuses of the EPS pharmacy nomination rules. In the same year, NHS England also updated its EPS nomination standards.
For business reasons, some dispensing practices have, or are considering, paying privately for dispensing patient EPS IT. However, this comes at a cost: namely, high running costs and the risk of exposing their dispensing patient list to aggressive online pharmacy marketing.
Speaking to the DDA in 2025, Dr William Bassett of Brown Clee Medical Centre in Ditton Priors near Bridgnorth, Shropshire, cited set up costs of around £4,000 plus annual running costs of £4,500 for his dispensary EPS system serving all 4,000 patients. Among his reasons for turning on the EPS for dispensing patients were patient safety and convenience, as well as the business ‘optics’ of practice modernisation.
Garstang Medical Practice in Garstang, Lancashire is a hybrid dispensary with a 72-hour pharmacy dispensing around 50,000 items a month. DDA Board Member and Dispensary Lead Partner Jacinta Edgar says the EPS is being considered for its potential workload benefits, as well as for the reputation of the practice, particularly, when trying to attract locum pharmacists. She says they describe handling paper prescription forms as “archaic”.
However, for Garstang, a stumbling block in implementation has been incompatibility with local NHS IT security systems.
The DDA’s view is that IT for core NHS functionality such as dispensing should be fully funded by the NHS, particularly, in Scotland, where practices can be required to provide dispensing services where patients in that area would otherwise have difficulty accessing a pharmacy.
The GPCs are sympathetic to the DDA’s view that EPS in dispensing practices should be fully funded by the NHS, but with changes in political leadership and governments characterising the start of 2026, the negotiating environment for all GPs, as well as dispensing GPs, is difficult.
The DDA’s advice remains that practices should avoid privately funding the EPS, where possible – a stance that will be discussed in more detail at the DDA 2026 Conference. DDA Chairman Dr Richard West said: “Our strength lies in our unity. There are very good reasons why the EPS should be funded in rural areas – not least of which are the patient safety benefits and practice efficiencies that are lost to rural patients.
“The GPCs are on our side. What we need is the political will to do the right thing for the rural patient, for greater NHS efficiency and for the practices that have been left behind – and exposed to unfair competition – simply by the NHS modernisation agenda.”
[1] Electronic Prescription Service dashboard - NHS England Digital (accessed July 2, 2026)
[2] General Pharmaceutical Services in England 2015/16 - 2024/25 | NHSBSA (accessed July 2, 2026)
[3] Statistics - NHS England Digital Dispenser Nominations (accessed July 2, 2026)
