A patient who has not set a nomination or does not wish to do so would be issued with an EPS Phase 4 green prescription token so that they may visit the pharmacy of their choice. Pharmacy teams would scan the bar code on the token to access the EPS script.

The token will be provided in a paper format, but in time tokens may be available in an electronic format (e.g. in an email from the GP practice, via a website or via an app). This approach would generally mean the prescription cannot be prepared before the patient presents in the pharmacy.

Recommended tips:

• If you receive a Phase 4 token, you should scan the barcode and dispense it as you would any other electronic prescription.
• Pharmacy teams can use the green Phase 4 prescription tokens to capture any patient exemption-related or charge-related signatures.
• Green Phase 4 tokens should be filed with all the other white EPS tokens and not within the main bundle of paper prescriptions before the submission is sent to the NHSBSA.
• Consider your system and print settings. Many PMR systems have settings to customise which types of EPS prescriptions may automatically have a white EPS dispensing token printed.
• Some pharmacy teams that process the Phase 4 token used a highlighter pen or a sticker to highlight the ‘Prescriber signature not required’ wording on the token, to highlight that it is a Phase 4 token rather than a barcoded paper prescription.
• During the earlier stages of the rollout, patients have sometimes filled in the back of the green Phase 4 token before they arrived at the pharmacy. If the pharmacy process involves shredding the green Phase 4 token and replacing it with a newly printed white dispensing token, the patient will have to complete the reverse of the dispensing token. To address this scenario, some pharmacy teams have changed their initial Phase 4 approach so that they use the green Phase 4 token for patient declarations, rather than printing out a new white EPS dispensing token for each Phase 4 script. In order to ensure the whole team are familiar with Phase 4 we recommend reading the following document : EPS+phase+4+dispenser+fact+sheet