Advisory Notice 2

Classes of Controlled Drugs printing on separate pages

The Misuse of Drugs Regulations has been amended to remove the need to physically sign controlled drug (CD) prescriptions and to provide pharmacy with the wet ink signed original of the prescription. This means that CDs can now be prescribed using a paperless workflow much like non-CD medications.

As the prescribing workflows for CD and non-CD prescriptions are now the same there is no longer the need separate CD medication and non-CD medication onto separate prescription forms.

The pharmacy will still need to apply the correct dispensing rules to each medicine. In time, vendors will introduce enhancements that will highlight the class of each controlled medicine on a prescription to make it clear that a controlled drug has been prescribed to ensure the correct rules are applied.

It is important to note:

  • The barcode identifier (SCID) MUST be used at the point of dispensing (i.e. scanned, or barcode details manually entered) for all NZePS prescriptions.

 

Advisory Notice 1

Changes to pharmacy dispensing requirements when eRxs are temporarily delayed in reaching the NZePS broker and pharmacy receives a ‘BUS002 error message’

For all NZePS prescriptions the following criteria must be met:

  • The barcode identifier (SCID) MUST be used at the point of dispensing (i.e. barcode scanned, barcode details manually entered)

If a BUS002 error is returned it will not be necessary to be obtain the original prescription.

Controlled Drugs:

If the CD eRx is temporarily not able to be downloaded from the NZePS:

  • For Class A or B controlled drugs it is no longer necessary to obtain an original/signed triplicate form copy of the prescription.
  • For all Class C controlled drugs it is no longer necessary to obtain an original/signed paper copy of the prescription

 

Non-Controlled Drugs:

If the eRx is temporarily not able to be downloaded from the NZePS:

  • For non-controlled drugs it is also no longer necessary to obtain an original/signed paper copy of the prescription

 

If asked, it will be necessary to link the scanned barcode (SCID) to the prescription and then continue to dispense manually. This creates a pharmacy eRx SCID which is immediately linked to the original prescriber eRx SCID. 

The original eRx will never be available for download again. This is why it is important to always use the eRx SCID.

If the same CD eRx SCID is used again at the pharmacy, or at another pharmacy, the pharmacy will receive the message "the prescription has already been dispensed". 

Any eRx item that has been dispensed, using the eRx SCID, cannot be dispensed again.

Therefore, despite receiving an error message after using the barcode at the point of dispensing, the relevant original triplicate form prescription or original prescription is not required.

For Toniq pharmacy BUS002 Errors - after receiving the BUS002 message, select the patient then you will receive a message:

“Do you want to link this visit to the previously scanned SCID (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)?”

the dispenser must select:

“Link this visit to SCID”

before continuing to manually enter the prescription. 

For RxOne pharmacy - once the manual dispensing process is completed the eRx SCID will automatically link to the original prescriber eRx SCID when completing the dispensing.