Prescription Signing Audit
The latest version of Prescription Signing Audit is part of Prescription Management v2
The Prescription Signing Audit search and reports are designed to help Practices review their EPS prescription signing activity. Some Practices want to use this to gauge the volume of prescriptions generated in a given time frame, while another use is to identify which prescriber signs the most (or least!) EPS prescriptions.
These searches are not intended to be used to reflect the number of items prescribed in a given month.
The searches are designed in a way that the date range can be defined when the search is run, and the reports will break down the number of signed scripts into daily, weekly, and monthly divisions.
Due to the limitations of EMIS Web with tracking prescription signing, the searches have to compromise on accuracy. As far as we're aware there isn't a more accurate method of tracking EPS signed prescriptions in EMIS Web; audit trails aren't helpful, while in the Workflow Manager it is possible to look at the 'Signed' folder in Medicine Management which can be a very manual process. Remember the task owner simply reflects whose inbox the signing task was found in, but if prescriptions are signed by somebody using Global View or perhaps deputising for a colleague you cannot quickly check who signed what in a larger batch.
The compromise is that the searches can only be indicative of a clinician's activity. An EPS task screen has a maximum of 4 prescriptions per screen (per signing click), while some may only have 1, 2, or 3 items. Whilst the number of items is a true reflection of signing, the number of actual clicks to sign / screens shown / time taken per screen cannot be reasonably derived from the total. Therefore the totals on the reports are more useful when the date range is bigger to account for everybody signing different sizes of prescriptions.
It’s also not really possible to
distinguish between those scripts signed in a consultation and those signed
through the Workflow Manager. The second set of reports can help to review the different types of prescription issued.
The searches do not look at date of issue, but instead the use the audit trail date. This reflects true signing done in the defined timeframe, and this is the reason why these searches should not be used as a data source for counting the number of items issued.
- Post-dated issues will be counted for the time they are signed as opposed to the time when they will be released to the dispensing contractor.
- Repeat dispensing batches are counted ONCE for the time they are signed (the RA page) as opposed to the calculated date the dispensing contractor will process an individual script (an RD page). If the search looked at date of issue instead, a batch of 6 would count 1 for every RD script.
Running the searches
We recommend running the whole folder together. Right click on the Prescription Signing Audit folder and press Run.
For the most part of this folder's purpose it is OK to leave the relative run date as today.
A Run Parameters box will appear.
Choose the date range you wish to look at. Remember that reports will break the data down into different timeframes so don't make the range too narrow. After or on 3 or 6 months before the search date is probably a good place to start.
If you are using a relative run date, also ticking before the search date will ignore any issues between the relative run date and today.
Viewing the reports
We have produced two sets of three reports to break down the data which are daily, weekly, and monthly. Weekly and monthly effectively enable an annual total to be quickly calculated.
Highlight the desired report, then press View Results on the ribbon (or right click the report then press View Results).
Reports EPS-01a to EPS-01c have been laid out to group staff together, so the layout will differ from below depending on the user types configured in your site. The order of user types and users is alphabetical and cannot be changed within EMIS Web but is very simple to rearrange in Excel.
EPS-01a) Daily breakdown by user:
EPS-01b) Weekly breakdown by user:
EPS-01c) Monthly breakdown by user:
Reports EPS-01d to EPS-01f break the reports down further into the four prescription types (acute, repeat, repeat dispensing, automatic). Bear in mind that some acutes may still be generated by other users and end up in the signing queue.
EPS-01d) Daily breakdown by type:
EPS-01e) Weekly breakdown by type:
EPS-01f) Monthly breakdown by type:
Individual prescriber workload
These searches may be used to analyse the signing workload of individual GPs, and as mentioned above it is better to run this data over a longer time period to achieve a fairer representation. Prescribers may be ill, on annual leave, or work fewer or extra sessions per week which need to be taken into account. A clinician using Repeat Dispensing more than colleagues will have less work to do overall.
We have used these reports before in our own Practices by processing the output in Excel to find out what a pro-rata proportion of scripts one would expect to sign for a 3 vs 6 vs 8 session GP. Those with knowledge of adding calculations in Excel will be able to apply a multiplication factor to the total column to identify if somebody is doing more or less than their fair share.
We have used these reports before in our own Practices by processing the output in Excel to find out what a pro-rata proportion of scripts one would expect to sign for a 3 vs 6 vs 8 session GP. Those with knowledge of adding calculations in Excel will be able to apply a multiplication factor to the total column to identify if somebody is doing more or less than their fair share.
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