This is an announcement on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Since December 2020, the requirement for community pharmacies to submit certain EPS tokens has been suspended. Only EPS tokens related to Serious Shortages Protocols (SSPs) are required to be submitted to facilitate payment. This suspension was initially put in place until 31 March 2021; it was then extended to 30 June 2021 and has now been extended until 31 August 2021 to coincide with the extension to the temporary suspension of the requirement for patient signatures on prescription forms.
Pharmacy contractors are advised that these suspensions will be kept under review and may be:
- extended, if there continues to be a cross infection risk
- removed, as soon as it is deemed safe for patients to resume signing forms
Any changes will be published on our website.