Coventry and Warwickshire integrated care board has said its prescription ordering direct (POD) service will close next month after deciding last year to decommission it having concluded it lacked value for money.

Insisting the service, which takes orders for repeat medication from patients registered with GP practices over the phone or online, experienced “deteriorating performance and operational difficulties,” the ICB said it is now in the process of “repatriating” repeat prescription ordering to GP practices.

In a briefing paper on the closure of the service, introduced in June 2015, the ICB said: “Support and funding is being made available to practices to manage this transition.”

It said its decision to stop the POD service will not affect pharmacies as they will continue to receive repeat prescriptions directly from practices “regardless of how the prescription was ordered.”

“Community pharmacy will remain able to order repeat medication on behalf of vulnerable patients with the agreement of the practice, as is the case now,” the ICB said.

It also said the end of the service will not greatly impact patients because they will increasingly use the NHS app and Patient Access app to order their medicines.

“We anticipate the majority of patients will chose to move to ordering their medications through these methods,” the ICB said. “All practices have patients using these methods already with app-based prescription ordering varying from 19-73 per cent in those practices that use POD.”

The service was designed to not only empower patients to take control of their own medication needs and order medicines from their own home but reduce stockpiling and medicine waste.