The Department of Health and Social Care (DH) yesterday (March 31) revealed details of how the newly announced £3.073 billion core contract for community pharmacies is to be spent.
The new 2025/26 community pharmacy contractual framework (CPCF) represents an increase of 18.6%, or £481 million, on 2023/24 figures, which had stayed at a fixed rate of £2.592bn since a five-year contract was agreed in 2019.
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In a letter to contractors, the DH and Community Pharmacy England (CPE) explained that some £900m of the core funding will be set aside for the allowed medicines margin, reflecting “the increased activity and costs associated with the supply of medicines”.
The bodies added that they had “also agreed to a one-off write-off of £193m of medicines margin over delivery”.
“The increase in margin and the impact of the write-off will both be reflected in the drug tariff from April 2025,” they said.
In a briefing to pharmacies, CPE added that an additional £215m “Pharmacy First budget” will “fund the cost of Pharmacy First clinical pathways, the pharmacy contraception service (PCS) and the hypertension case-finding service (HCFS)”.
Fee boosts
The letter also announced that several fees paid to contractors will change from today (April 1).
It laid out that the single activity fee (SAF) will increase by some 15%, rising from £1.27 to £1.46.
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And service fees will also be subject to changes, with the fee for both PCS initiation and continuation consultations increasing from £18 to £25.
The fee for Pharmacy First minor illness and clinical pathways consultations will also increase from £15 to £17, the letter added.
And from this month, the new medicine service (NMS) payment structure “will be simplified”, it said.
A new “split fee” will see contractors paid £14 “for completion of the initial intervention consultation and a second fee of £14 for completion of the follow-up consultation”, it added.
And fee flops
But not all service fees will see an uplift – the letter revealed that the fee for a hypertension “clinic check consultation will reduce from £15 to £10” per consultation from this month.
“When the service was introduced in 2021, the fees were based on a pharmacist providing the service,” CPE explained.
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“In November 2023, following changes to the VAT regulations, the service specification was changed to allow suitably trained pharmacy staff to provide the service – accordingly, from April 2025 the fee…will be adjusted,” it added.
However, it stressed that “there is still plenty of potential to provide more ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) consultations within the service”.
“To support that aim, it has been agreed that the fee for ABPM provision will be increased to £50.85 – a 13% increase – from April 2025,” it added.
Marginal gains
While the DH and CPE’s letter to contractors promised a historic £193m margin over-delivery write-off and £900m allowed margin for this year, it added that although the margin is “being recouped, concessionary prices will be constrained so as not to undermine the recouping”.
If over-delivery continues, the bodies will consider “further strategies to stabilise Category M such as moving margin between categories or increasing the branded discount deduction percentages,” it added.
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CPE said that government also made some “additional statements confirming its position” on funding and reimbursement.
Among the statements were its “wider ambition to redesign the whole payment timetable to reduce complexity”.
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