As of November 1, the Government has temporarily suspended the requirement for patients to sign the back of NHS prescription forms and EPS tokens.

The move, which the PSNC has been lobbying for since the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, is being introduced to help limit the spread of coronavirus.

The change is initially being brought in until March 31 2021, but will be kept under review and may be extended if the risk of infection persists.

While the suspension is in place, pharmacy teams must mark the correct ‘exempt’ or ‘paid’ category on the FP10 form or EPS token on the patient’s behalf. This is not required where a real time exemption check (RTEC) confirms a patient’s exemption.

Patients should still be asked to pay the relevant fee if they are not eligible for free prescriptions, and must show evidence of their eligibility in the usual way.

PSNC director of operations and support Gordon Hockey said: “PSNC has been actively seeking a temporary exemption from signing prescription forms since the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic and welcomes the Government’s decision to waive this requirement for a second wave.

“For many months now pharmacy teams have understandably been concerned about infection control and this, coupled with massively increased workloads, has not been a conducive environment for collecting patient exemption declarations.”