Scrapping the new medicine service (NMS) would be detrimental to the government's drive to improve medicines adherence, PSNC has said, as pharmacists warned the service could be an easy target for NHS cuts.

PSNC expected the Department of Health (DH) to recommission the NMS next year, after figures released last week showed the service was helping patients take their medicines properly, contractor and chair of the PSNC service development subcommittee Gary Warner said.

The figures, collected through PSNC's PharmOutcomes, covered NMS interventions to more than 224,000 patients from the service's launch on October 1, 2011 to September 30, 2012. It revealed that 32 per cent of non-adherent patients became more adherent to their medication following NMS interventions.

"To withdraw it might be detrimental to the work that we're doing with the DH in terms of improving adherence and reducing waste" Gary Warner, PSNC

More on the NMS NMS works for patients, it must work for you too NMS improves medicines adherence, PSNC finds Jonathan Mason on improving NMS interventions

Mr Warner said the final decision on the NMS's future would be confirmed following the evaluation by Nottingham University research group to be published next year, but he hoped the latest figures showed the service was "not only valuable but invaluable". "To withdraw it might be detrimental to the work that we're doing with the DH in terms of improving adherence and reducing waste," Mr Warner said.

But community pharmacist Clive Hodgson said he could see "certain people in the DH seeing [the decommissioning of NMS] as an attractive option".

"It's all down to funding. Let's put it this way, if NMS was cancelled tomorrow due to the money saved, I think you've got to ask yourself: how much would patients lose? I think only a bit," he said.

And community pharmacist Hassan Argomandkhah told C+D the NMS was "designed to fail from the beginning".

"The DH wanted to take money out of pharmacy and didn't want to put it back in properly," Mr Argomandkhah said. "I don't think the service as it's designed is supporting patients because there is a lot of duplication."

However, Mr Warner praised contractors, whose engagement with the NMS he called "phenomenal".

"They've engaged with it, they've delivered it, and I think what's really key for me is talking to pharmacists that are delivering it, [you get] a really positive sense that they're doing something positive for patients."