Contractors who wish to claw back up to £6,400 per pharmacy under the first round of funding must meet certain gateway criteria by April 28, NHS England confirmed in October.

For the purposes of the April review, pharmacies will need to provide “evidence” that they have applied for an NHSmail account by February 1, NHS Digital said last month.

At the time, C+D reported that some pharmacies were having trouble registering for a shared account.

Last week (December 29), the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) confirmed that NHS England and NHS Digital have introduced a new email address for pharmacies to register for an NHSmail account by the February 1 deadline.

To meet the requirements of the quality payments funding, contractors can send the following details for each of their pharmacies to [email protected]:

• Pharmacy's trading name
• Owner’s name
• Address, including postcode (for the premises the NHSmail address will apply to)
• Pharmacy's F code
• Pharmacy's telephone number
• Pharmacy's current email address.

NHS England and NHS Digital want all pharmacies to have shared mailboxes which can be accessed by pharmacists using their own NHSmail accounts, PSNC explained.

Existing shared mail accounts will be “modified to conform” to the new national approach for registering for NHSmail, the negotiator added.

Further details on the new NHSmail process and what to do with existing addresses is expected in “due course”, PSNC said.

NHSmail and emergency supply pilot

NHS England confirmed last month that it had narrowed the criteria to receive quality payments, including requiring pharmacies to deliver either medicines use reviews, the new medicine service or the upcoming urgent supply pilot if they want to receive funding.

Having an NHSmail account is also a prerequisite to providing the emergency supply service. However, a local pharmaceutical committee involved in the first wave of pilots told C+D last month that the service was likely to be delayed because of problems accessing NHSmail.

Some pharmacists expecting to provide the emergency supply pilot service have taken to Twitter over the past week to report the same issues:

Still no NHS email address for pharmacy open tomorrow when we're meant to be providing NUMSAS so @NHS111 can't refer to us #partyinabrewery

— Ben Merriman (@blmerriman) December 31, 2016

@ChemistDruggist same in my areas. In fact local emergency supply scheme will continue, especially as NUMSAS only allows 111 referral

— Nick Hunter (@NickHunter19) January 3, 2017