Contents:

Benefits for patients

Our process

Patient sign-up

Prescription requests

Acute prescriptions and out-of-stock medicines

Fridge and controlled medicines

LloydsDirect works with NHS England to simplify repeat prescriptions. Patients can easily order their medicine through our app or website and get them delivered for free. This can benefit those who do not live close to a pharmacy or have mobility issues, as well as anyone else who wants to save time. And our job does not end when patients receive their medicine. We remind them when to order again to make sure there aren’t any gaps between prescriptions. We also send patients reminders to take their medicine, which have been shown to improve adherence.

On top of that, patients can manage medicines for friends, family or anyone else they care for. They can easily order prescriptions from their own account and send them straight to their loved ones’ addresses. Plus, our handy reminders allow them to keep track of who’s running low.

Offering all this flexibility does not mean we cost patients or the NHS anything extra. We charge the standard NHS rate unless patients are exempt or have a prepayment certificate.

Signing up to LloydsDirect is very simple. Patients can use their NHS number and personal details or just their NHS login. Using the latter speeds up the process and allows us to link the patient’s account directly to their GP surgery’s online services.

This has two main benefits. Normally, patients have to manually add their repeat medicine to their account. By signing up with their NHS login, their medicine list will automatically reflect what’s on their NHS record. Plus, any prescription requests for orders they place will go straight into the software their GP surgery uses. This means that you, as a healthcare professional, will be able to respond to these requests much faster.

If a patient does not have an NHS login or has forgotten their password, there is another way to connect their account with their GP’s online services. To do this a patient needs to request the following information from you:

Once you provide these, they can add them to their LloydsDirect account.

Every time a patient places an order, we’ll send you a prescription request on their behalf. Sometimes, you might receive one earlier than expected. The most likely reason is we’ve sent the patient an order reminder. We send order reminders 10 to 14 days before the patient’s due to run out. This is because arranging for home delivery takes extra steps and time. So to protect the patient’s health, we want to ensure orders arrive with time to spare. Another reason we might send you a request earlier is to minimise disruptions caused by postal service strikes.

For some medicines, we ask patients to specify which brand they need. We do this as some people find that certain brands work better than others. However, the GP always has the last word on what’s best for the patient. If you think the brand requested is not right, please speak to the patient directly.

Sometimes, you might receive a request for an item you have already approved as part of another prescription. That’s because we could not fulfil the original prescription as one or more items were out of stock. In this case, you’ll receive a new request for the available items so we can dispense these. This ensures the patient won’t have to wait for all the items to become available to receive their order.

As the patient’s nominated pharmacy, acute prescriptions might be sent to us. We are able to process them, as long as the patient does not need these on the same day. For urgent medicines, such as antibiotics or antifungal treatments, we upgrade the delivery method from our standard Royal Mail 48 tracked to 24 tracked. This upgrade is completely free of charge.

If the patient needs their prescription on the same day, we can return it to the NHS Spine. The patient can request this through our app or website. We’ll then email them a barcode and serial number, which they can use to collect their medicine at any local pharmacy. This process is very quick – they should receive an email within 10 minutes. Patients can request the same for out-of-stock items if they don’t want to wait for these to become available.

We take extra care when sending temperature-sensitive medicines like insulin. For these, we use ice packs and award-winning Woolcool® insulated packaging. Woolcool® is made from 100% sheep wool and is eco-friendly. For added safety, we also upgrade all fridge medicines to Royal Mail tracked 24. We don’t charge the patients for this – it’s to ensure the items will spend less time on the road.

We treat some controlled medicines similarly. We automatically upgrade the postage method to Royal Mail 24 signed for. Patients don’t have to pay for this upgrade either. If a patient’s controlled medicine needs to be kept in safe custody, we advise them to contact our Patient Care team before they order.