The chair of the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has accused the NHS of withholding fees owed to community pharmacies for delivering Pharmacy First services.
In a post shared on LinkedIn yesterday (January 15), Olivier Picard said pharmacies are being “denied payment” due to a “change” that reduced the claim window from three months to one month.
The new deadline, announced as part of the 2025/26 funding deal agreed in March last year, came into effect on June 1, 2025.
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Picard said that the “tightly enforced claim deadline” is one that “many contractors neither reasonably understood nor were properly warned about”.
“Let’s be clear,” Picard added. “The work was done. Patients were treated. The NHS benefited. Yet payments are being withheld on a technicality.”
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The NHSBSA said on its website last year that before June 1, late claims would be accepted “if made within three months” of the date they should have been submitted.
But from June, it added, late submissions “will only be accepted” if made by the last day of the month that follows the one in which the Pharmacy First service was delivered.
And it said “later claims will not be paid, unless the submission of a claim was delayed by IT issues outside the contractor’s control”.
“Outrageous”
Picard said “many pharmacies don’t even realise they’re missing money” and contractors “are only discovering the issue long after the window has closed, when it’s already too late”.
He added that at a time when pharmacies are “struggling for survival”, the NHSBSA’s behaviour is “outrageous” and “shows a worrying lack of respect for community pharmacy as a trusted NHS partner”.
“This is not a system designed to support frontline care,” he said. “Instead, it is a system designed to catch people out.”
“Not responsible”
But the NHSBSA told C+D it is “not responsible for any changes to the Drug Tariff, including changes to time limits on making claims”.
“We are directed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DH) to make payments for NHS Pharmacy First consultations that meet the criteria set out in the Drug Tariff,” it said.
It added that it does “not have any discretion to process claims that fall outside of the time limit”.
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It comes after the NPA this week wrote to Chancellor Rachel Reeves warning that “many pharmacy businesses will be unable to survive” the increase in business rates “without further support from the government”.
And it follows the body last month slamming the NHS’s “bombshell” move to claw back millions of pounds from community pharmacy owners over the next 12 months.
