The Department of Health and Social Care (DH) has redetermined May and June reimbursement fees for a range of products to reflect an increase in their NHS list prices.
Community Pharmacy England (CPE) said yesterday that the redetermined prices follow representations it made “on behalf of community pharmacy owners”.
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The DH has agreed to grant retrospective price adjustments for a range of branded and generic products “to avoid pharmacy owners dispensing these products at a loss,” the negotiator said.
It estimated that its interventions will have “prevented community pharmacies from losing an estimated £80k to medicine price rises”.
Price redeterminations
The medicines with amended reimbursements include specialist nutritional supplements, metabolic disorder medical foods, dysphagia thickeners and branded inhalers – many of which sit outside the Drug Tariff and are therefore vulnerable to reimbursement delays when manufacturers increase prices.
“Under the current price change mechanism, pharmacy owners would have to wait one, or in some cases two months, before any NHS list prices changes are applied to reimbursement of branded products,” CPE noted.
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“The delays in reimbursement prices catching up with any NHS list price increases can lead to dispensing at a loss, as pharmacies will be reimbursed based on the previous NHS list price until the price change is adjusted in line with the price change timetable,” it added.
The negotiator said the impact of delayed reimbursement is particularly significant for “products with large list price increases or for high volume lines”.
One example is nutritional supplement TYR sphere20, for which the previous NHS list price was £742.01. The redetermined reimbursement price granted by the DH for the product is £772.80.
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The planned payment date for the products granted a pricing adjustment is September 1, with the new prices to be included in the June 2026 Schedule of Payments.
CPE said it “sought price adjustments to several other products affected by NHS list price increases in May, June and July” but these were not granted by the DH.
The negotiator “continues to seek a review of the current price change timetable for branded products so that there is no extra months’ delay in applying any new list prices changes to reimbursement”, it added.
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It comes after a survey revealed earlier this week that 99% of pharmacies say NHS reimbursement fails to cover medicine costs.
And it follows drug price concessions reaching a record high for the fourth consecutive month in June, with CPE saying it “continues to receive thousands of reports from pharmacy owners each month about the medicines they cannot obtain at tariff prices”.
