Money from the Pharmacy Integration Fund had been used to fund CPCS IT systems licences and was originally due to end on March 31, at which point contractors would have to buy their own IT support.

However, NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE&I) has decided to extend the funding for a further six months “as part of a package of interventions…to support contractors during the pandemic”, the commissioner said in an update yesterday.

“Further information will follow locally from NHSE&I regional teams,” it added.

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) advised that from October 1, “contractors providing the CPCS will need to procure their own CPCS IT system”.

“By that time, we hope that a range of pharmacy IT suppliers, including patient medication record (PMR) system vendors, will have been able to develop support for the CPCS, so that community pharmacy contractors have a choice of potential IT solutions to support the provision of the service,” PSNC said.

Last year, C+D revealed that community pharmacies in England that signed up to provide the CPCS were paid an average of just under £48 a month for offering the service in its first six months and more than 1,000 claims were potentially not submitted in time for contractors to receive the service payment.