NHS England (NHSE) has today (October 14) announced that “following representations from Community Pharmacy England (CPE)”, it has “revised downward the minimum activity requirements” for the Pharmacy First service “for the remainder of 2024/25″.
In a keynote presentation at the Pharmacy Show in Birmingham, it set out that to qualify for a monthly payment pharmacies must deliver a minimum of:
- 20 consultations in November and December 2024
- 25 in January and February 2025
- 30 in March 2025
Read more: UPDATED: October Pharmacy First consultation threshold reduced to 20
This month, the threshold had been set to climb from 20 to 30 – meaning that pharmacies delivering the service would have to complete a minimum of 20 consultations in order to qualify for a fixed monthly payment of £1,000.
The threshold was last month cut to 20 for October, but it remained unclear how many consultations pharmacies would have to deliver from November.
“We are keen to support pharmacies to continue to provide Pharmacy First and so have been reviewing minimum activity levels based on early levels of uptake and activity across the country,” a slide presented at the conference said.
“Not as large a reduction as we wanted”
“While not as large a reduction in the thresholds as we wanted, these changes at least indicate ministers are taking a much more pragmatic approach to Pharmacy First payment thresholds,” CPE chief executive Janet Morrison said.
She added that CPE is “grateful that some longer-term adjustments have now been made”, as this is “one the key issues” the negotiator has been raising with the government “alongside the desperate wider financial position” for the sector.
Read more: Revealed: The top ten Pharmacy First minor illness service providers
But Morrison stressed that it is “critical” that NHSE effectively advertises the service to the public “on an ongoing basis” and increases referral rates from GP practices.
This would “allow community pharmacies to maximise the amount of allocated funding that they can earn from this important service”, which is a “key concern” for CPE as it “[prepares] to re-enter funding negotiations with government”, she said.
“We will continue to monitor the situation carefully,” she added.
Threshold flip-flopping
The Pharmacy First consultation threshold for August was also reduced from 20 to 15 at the end of July.
At the time, CPE said that “the thresholds for the monthly Pharmacy First payment has been a topic of great concern for pharmacy owners” and the negotiator.
When details of the Pharmacy First service were announced in November, Morrison said that the negotiator had managed to reduce the thresholds to be “much more achievable”.
Read more:UPDATED: August Pharmacy First consultation threshold dropped to 15
Meanwhile in August, C+D revealed the inside workings of Optipharm, which topped the tables for the highest number of Pharmacy First consultations with over 3,000 for minor illness referrals completed in April.
And last month, C+D exclusively revealed that commissioners have suspended four pharmacies from the Pharmacy First scheme, all of which were leading providers of minor illness referral consultations: Optipharm, Overton & Pickup, Meacher Higgins & Thomas, and Cavendish Pharmacy.
According to the latest NHS dispensing data, the average for all pharmacies in England in June was 11minor illness referral consultations.
