Details of the long-overdue and much anticipated community pharmacy contract have finally been revealed; and it’s not before time. With many community pharmacies on the brink, desperately holding on to survive the last few tumultuous years, this is welcome news.
We can only hope that the additional cash injection will help revive a sector that has been on its knees for years. Yet, the figure is still woefully short of that needed to fill the gaping financial hole identified by the NPA as a real term funding cut of 40% over the past 10 years.
But it’s a start, and we need to focus on how to make the most of the new contract. We at Mediapharm are here to help ensure you meet the necessary conditions to maximise your income and have well trained competent staff ready to support you and your patients.
Service led
It’s clear the focus is on providing clinical services that are more convenient and accessible to the public: the fees have increased for Pharmacy First consultations (up from £15 to £17) and the Pharmacy Contraception Service (up from £18 to £25). And, importantly, these services can now also be provided by pharmacy technicians.
The phased payments for NMS have also been simplified: there is now a split fee with £14 paid on completion of the initial intervention, and a second fee of £14 paid on completion of a follow-up consultation. The service has also been expanded to include depression.
Of particular interest is the introduction of an emergency contraception service as part of the PCS. This is expected to be introduced in October, with a fee of £20 paid per consultation, plus reimbursement for the cost of the EHC.
Quality at the core
A quick win for pharmacy teams is to ensure that the training identified in the Pharmacy Quality Services (PQS) has been completed, or is underway. For this year the PQS has been pared down considerably which will make it more manageable to ensure the whole team is compliant and eligible for payment.
Most likely, anyone that training completed last time around will still be valid as all three courses were part of previous PQS or service requirements. The training requirements are summarised below, indicating the PQS domain, who should complete the training and the period in which training and assessment must have been completed.
Medicines optimisation
- CPPE Consulting with people with mental health problems e-learning: period 1/4/2022 – 31/3/2026
- Pharmacists
- CPPE Emergency contraception e-learning and assessment: period 1/4/2023 – 31/3/2026.
- Pharmacists
- Pharmacy technicians (if intending to provide the service)
Pharmacy First
- CPPE Sepsis e-learning and assessment: period 1/4/2024 – 31/3/2026
- Pharmacists
- Pharmacy technicians
These courses are also recommended for trainee pharmacists but are not required, and similarly, all except the mental health e-learning are recommended for trainee pharmacy technicians, but are not required.
All pharmacy professionals in your team need to download their CPPE certificate (or ‘certificate of study’ for CPPE Consulting with people with mental health problems) and give pharmacy owners a copy as evidence which need to be kept for three years for post-payment verification purposes.
The challenge of course for pharmacy owners is to keep track of who has completed which courses and when, and who has not, enabling you to identify and chase up colleagues so you can confirm compliance for your team on Pharmaoutcomes and claim payment. Keeping a file of certificates for all three courses for the team can also get messy if you have multiple pharmacies. But that’s where we can help with our specialist pharmacy all in one e-elearning platform.
Training for support staff
The good news is that the contract also recognises the role of pharmacy support staff and nurturing the skill mix so they can get more involved in delivering pharmacy services. This could mean more hands-on deck to ease pressure, and also opportunities to deliver more services to more people.
- Smoking cessation services – any trained and competent member of the team will be able to deliver this service. It is likely that they would need to complete the same training in the service spec for the NHS Smoking Cessation Service (SCS). The start date has not yet been confirmed.
- Hypertension-case finding service – the fee for blood pressure checks has dropped to £10 to reflect the change in skill mix, but it means more members of the team can start delivering the service.
- Health promotion – health champions and support staff can all play a role in delivering the 2025/26 required two national health campaigns and two local campaigns chosen by the ICB.
It is important, therefore, to review the skill mix of your team and the processes you have in place for delivering services. Support staff are usually the first point of contact for customers and so can help promote the pharmacy services, refer eligible customers and help with any associated admin. All this helps pharmacists and pharmacy technicians free up time to focus on the clinical services in the new contract.
Next steps
If you’re a Mediapharm Academy subscriber the good news is you’re already covered. We’ll assign the right courses to the right people so you don’t lose out on any PQS fees.
If not, book a call here and we’ll get you set up straight away so you can track:
- PQS training
- Statutory and mandatory training
- GPhC accredited courses and more
Book a call with one of our pharmacy training experts here.
