Proposals to delegate “all vaccination services” and “most components of screening services” to integrated care boards (ICBs) have been approved by NHSE’s board, it yesterday (February 11) told C+D.
The now-approved proposal documents set out plans to delegate the “vast majority” of these services to ICBs on April 1 2026 – including community pharmacy services such as flu vaccination and blood pressure checks.
Read more: UPDATED: NHSE vaccination strategy points to ‘greater role’ for community pharmacy
From then, “ICBs will have responsibility for a wider range of prevention services for their populations and greater levers to discharge their population health function”, they said.
“A very small proportion of the overall [screening] programme” is set to be “retained by NHSE and commissioned once for the whole country”, they added.
Read more: GPs to vote on ‘immediate’ end to pharmacy blood pressure checks
These exclusions include child health information services (CHIS), bowel cancer screening hubs and managed service provision, the cervical screening administration service (CSAS), HPV cytology laboratories and newborn bloodspot laboratory services, the documents said.
“NHSE will have a role - and therefore require expertise in assurance, standard setting, co-ordinating and planning above ICB level - implementing new programmes and programme changes and incident management to support the requirement for national consistency in vaccination and screening programmes,” they added.
National commissioning “most efficient”
Reacting to the news, Company Chemists’ Association (CCA) chief executive Malcolm Harrison said that “for many NHS vaccinations, the most efficient approach is to provide a consistent patient offer through nationally defined programmes”.
“This ensures that patients nationwide know what to expect of their local pharmacy and supports uptake rates,” he added.
But he said that “ICB-led commissioning can also provide opportunities to commission bespoke vaccination and screening services based on local and unmet need”.
“Community pharmacy has a clear role to play in meeting patient need and increasing uptake for both national and local programmes,” he added.
“The CCA is urging NHSE to commission pharmacies to deliver a wide range of NHS vaccinations – including pneumonia, shingles, meningitis, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and other routine childhood vaccinations,” he said.
Flu fee clawback
In February board meeting papers, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) highlighted plans to “support local pharmaceutical committees (LPCs) in the development of locally commissioned services”.
It highlighted CPE’s “ongoing” support for LPC evaluations “for scaling across regions and as part of a pipeline for national services”, adding that “work continues on a vaccinations toolkit”.
Read more: NI extends free flu jabs to over-50s as other nations rule out move
“Greater capacity to undertake this work will be available from later in March, when our new service development manager Vicki James joins the services team,” it said.
Meanwhile, the board papers also revealed that some pharmacy flu jab fees are set to be clawed back by NHSE.
“A small number of flu vaccinations were administered in general practices and community pharmacies to adults outside of the announced and authorised cohorts prior to October 3,” CPE said.
Read more: Pharmacy technicians added to NHS flu jab PGD in professional first
“NHSE advised that they intend to recover the item of service (IoS) fee for any vaccinations administered outside of the announced and authorised cohorts prior to October 3,” it added.
“Reimbursement for the supplied vaccines will still be made in the usual way this year; however, they may seek to withhold/recover this reimbursement in future years if the situation reoccurs,” it stressed.
Vaccination strategy
In December 2023, NHSE’s vaccination strategy outlined that community pharmacy could have “a greater role in seasonal vaccination”.
At the time, CPE flagged that the strategy sought to “delegate commissioning responsibility for vaccination services” from NHSE to ICBs.
Read more: IN FULL: CPE sets April to July ‘timeframe’ to deliver new contract
The NHSE document said that the national commissioner “[expected] in future” that local commissioners would “enable community pharmacy to play a greater role in seasonal vaccination delivery where appropriate”.
This includes “increased collaboration between community pharmacy and other parts of the vaccination delivery network”, it added.
