[NexphaseNorthy]

I remember doing some tests in a branch a while back - the GP surgery next door to the pharmacy was producing barcoded scripts so there was a constant flow, including homes patients. If I recall rightly, we scanned and labelled around 300 scripts, mostly with three or more items on, in four hours.

I didn't find that waiting for the scripts was to bad - I scanned in batches of 5 to 10 scripts.* Two things which slowed me down was waiting for the scripts to finish labeling / endorsing and the patient matching. Depending on your PMR system, if a GP uploads a prescription for one of your regular patients but they have an extra initial in the name, or they have put the address in to the surgery software in the wrong place (eg first line on second line of screen), then when you download that prescription your computer will suggest creating a new patient, as there is nothing which matches on your system (although Scottish pharmacies seem to keep track of CHI numbers, English / Welsh pharmacies don't seem to need to record patient NHS numbers). So if you're not on your toes, you could find duplicate patient records which you have to merge later on, not to mention the additional step of setting up a new patient.

* Jeff is right- you will find it easier if you have two terminals - although your system should not stop you from dispensing a 'non' EPS script while you wait for messages to download.