Problems Solved
Why can’t I email my GP?
Q Help! I registered with my local GP practice to order my repeat prescriptions online. I was invited to visit mypractice.prescriptionservice@nhs.net in order to make my request to our local chemist. This is where the problem starts, as the computer asked me choose an application to open the ‘mailto’ link. This listed Yahoo! Mail and Googlemail as options, but I use Firefox for my emails. I visited the General section of Firefox’s Settings page and selected Firefox as the default for mailto. Having done this I restarted and then clicked the mailto link and was pleased to find this time that Firefox was listed as an option. Unfortunately, selecting Firefox did not seem to take me further and I jumped back to where I came from. Having read Computeractive for many years, I cannot recall you ever mentioning mailto. What does it do? I did not get much help online. I use Plusnet webmail, incidentally.
John Shepherd
A The fundamentals of your problem are quite straightforward. However, it took us a while to unravel what you originally wrote, and what we’ve published has been edited for length.
So let’s start with the place you were “invited to visit”. This is an email address. We have changed it here to avoid revealing your real practice. However, its format is one used by many NHS trusts and, frankly, we believe many less confident computer users would struggle to understand what to do with it because the full stop in the address can be confusing.
We think you started by typing this email address into Google, as doing so returns precisely one result (for your specific practice). If you then click that link, the surgery website opens on a page about ordering repeat prescriptions. That page includes an invitation to do so via email, by clicking
