Community Pharmacy England publishes new guidance on Data Security and Protection Toolkit

Community Pharmacy England has published new guidance to help members to complete the 2022/23 Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPTK). 

The Toolkit is used to make a pharmacy’s information governance (IG) declaration and the deadline is Friday (30 June).

Community Pharmacy England collaborated with the NHS DSPTK team to keep the workload associated with Toolkit completion manageable whilst maintaining the appropriate data security protections. 

Key differences in this year’s Toolkit include- improvements to the Toolkit’s layout; improvements to the question wording and pharmacy-specific tips; and the Toolkit displays the answers submitted by the pharmacy in the previous submission for various questions, allowing pharmacy owners to simply confirm that the information remains accurate and adjust this if necessary.

The NHS Parent Organisation Code (POC) headquarters (HQ) batch submission feature also continues to enable to allow pharmacy owners (that own three or more pharmacies) to complete a single submission for all their premises.

“As with last year, the majority of pharmacy owners should have access to information to help them answer the more technical questions contained within the Toolkit. Those who have refreshed and updated their templates in Community Pharmacy England’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Workbook, will be able to meet the criteria for completing around half of the Toolkit questions, and should type or paste ‘see GDPR WB’ into those questions,” said Community Pharmacy England.

“Pharmacy owners with three or more pharmacies may check that the list of pharmacies associated with their NHS POC code is still correct so that any issues can be rectified as soon as possible.”