If you look at what patients actually do on a pharmacy website, one thing dominates: they request their repeat prescription. Not the about page, not the blog, not the vaccination gallery. The repeat form is the workhorse, and it is the feature most worth getting right. This guide covers how online repeat ordering works in England, what a good form asks for, and what has to happen behind it.
How repeat ordering actually works in England
Most repeat prescriptions in England are issued by the GP practice and sent electronically through the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) to the patient's nominated pharmacy. The patient's routes to a repeat are:
- Ordering from the GP directly through the NHS App, the practice's online services or by phone or paper slip.
- Asking the pharmacy to request it — the pharmacy's managed repeat service, where the pharmacy submits the request to the practice on the patient's behalf, with the patient's consent and only for items they confirm they need.
- Electronic repeat dispensing (eRD), where the prescriber authorises a batch and the pharmacy dispenses each issue without a new request.
An online repeat form on a pharmacy website supports the second of these. The patient tells you which items they need; your team checks the request and sends it to the surgery in the usual way, or dispenses the next eRD issue. The form does not connect to the GP system or to EPS itself, and it should not claim to. What it replaces is the phone call, the paper slip through the door, and the note left with a delivery driver.
NHS England's guidance on managed repeats is clear that pharmacies should only order what the patient has confirmed they need, to avoid stockpiling and waste, so a good form is built around that: item by item, with the patient ticking what they need this time.
What a good repeat form asks for
The form should ask for the minimum your team needs to identify the patient and act on the request, and nothing else. In practice that is:
- Full name and date of birth (to match the patient on your PMR)
- A contact number or email for "it's ready" or "we need to check something"
- The items required, as a free-text list or, better, from a saved list of their usual medicines
- Whether they want to collect or have it delivered, if you deliver
- Consent for you to request the prescription from their GP on their behalf
Things it should not ask for: the NHS number (patients rarely know it), the GP practice on every order (ask once), the dose of each item (they will get it wrong and your PMR has it), and a login before they can do anything. Forms that demand an account before a first order lose most first-time users; accounts are for the second order, when saved details make it faster.
Why the form matters commercially
A patient on four regular medicines ordering monthly generates around 48 items a year. Each item earns the single activity fee and contributes to your monthly dispensing volume; a stable base of these patients is what makes the numbers work. When ordering is easy they stay, and when it is friction they drift to whichever pharmacy or online service made it easiest. The nomination value calculator puts a figure on one patient's annual worth; a repeat form that works on a phone is the cheapest way to keep them.
The form also does something the phone cannot: it works at 10pm on a Sunday, which is when a surprising share of requests come in.
The part patients never see
A form is only half of the feature. The other half is what happens to the submission.
- It must land somewhere with a status. "New", "requested from GP", "ready to collect", "delivered". If it lands in an inbox, requests get missed and patients ring to chase, which is the call the form was meant to remove.
- More than one person needs to see it. Repeat requests come in every day; the dispenser on shift needs access, not just the owner.
- It needs to be stored securely. Name plus medicine list is health data. It should be in a system with access control and a retention policy, not forwarded around email.
- The patient needs a confirmation. An on-screen message and, ideally, a text or email when the prescription is ready. That single message removes the largest category of inbound calls.
On a PharmGrowth pharmacy website, repeat requests land in their own tab of the admin dashboard with a status, the team updates it as the request moves, and the patient can be notified when it is ready. On the White Label App, patients keep a saved medication list and reorder with a tap; the request lands in the same dashboard.
Common mistakes
- Asking for too much. Every extra field costs completions, especially on a phone.
- No item list. "Tell us what you need" as one text box produces "my tablets" and a phone call.
- No consent line. If you are requesting on the patient's behalf, say so and record it.
- No "ready" notification. Otherwise the patient rings to ask.
- Burying the form. It should be one tap from the homepage and in the main menu.
- Claiming it is "connected to the NHS". It is not, and patients who believe it is will be confused when their GP has no record of the request.
Repeat ordering and EPS nominations together
The repeat form works best for patients who have already nominated you, because the prescription then arrives at your pharmacy automatically once the GP issues it. That is why the nomination form and the repeat form should sit side by side and link to each other: a new patient nominates you once, then orders repeats through the same site from then on. Our guide to increasing EPS nominations covers the first half; this article is the second.