Community pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in England will be able to access the Shielded Patient Flag (SPF), Summary Care Record (SCR), the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) and the Patient Demographic Service (PDS) from any community pharmacy in England by June 5.

Temporary smartcard positions have been created by NHS Digital that will provide additional flexibility to some 19,000 pharmacists and over 3,500 pharmacy technicians for an initial 12 months during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Tuesday’s Primary Care Bulletin.

The new position has already been granted to existing locum pharmacists and technicians to ensure they have consistent access to SCRs from wherever they are working. This work is being done centrally, with no action required by individuals.

Under new Covid-19 policy arrangements, over 21 million patient SCRs have so far been amended to include both core and additional information by default. The additional information available includes: 

• significant medical history (past and present)
• reason for medication
• anticipatory care information (such as information about the management of long term conditions)
• end of life care information
• immunisations.

There will also be a temporary change to include COVID-19 specific codes on SCRs. Users of the SCR application and SCR 1-click will be able to see specific, suspected and confirmed COVID-19 information by a message box displayed within the SCR.