About Community Pharmacy South Central
Continuously improving the quality of care we give patients and improving the outcomes of their treatment is the core purpose of the new NHS commissioning system.
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The Department of Health (DH) has introduced a Quality Payments Scheme as part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework in 2017/18. This involves payments being made to community pharmacy contractors meeting certain gateway and quality criteria, with funding taken from the overall funding for 2017/18 of £2.592 billion. See below for the CPSCs initial explanation, guidance, support material and newsletter updates.
As you are well aware the imposed two year Government funding package changes took effect from December 1st which removes £113m from Community Pharmacy representing a 4% reduction in revenue for this financial year and a further £95m decrease the year after; representing another 7.5%. This loss of revenue will affect all our contractors to varying amounts depending upon individual prescription items dispensed and geographical locality in respect to other pharmacies. One thing that will be consistent however is the need to review current service provision and to explore ways in which to maximise this to offset some of the direct remuneration loss from prescription payments.
A simple way to summarise the funding changes is shown pictorially below as a squeeze from both sides on Community Pharmacy.
The NHS Quality Payment scheme details are becoming more clear as each week goes by since their initial announcement back in October 2016. CPSC would like to ensure that all contractors are aware of the new scheme and how best to progress achieving the maximum remuneration in the most efficient capacity.
The CPSC committee formed a HLP & Quality Payments Task & Finish group to work through the detail and consider what further actions CPSC needed to take on behalf of contractors.
There is already a lot of detail published regarding the new Quality Payment scheme. The group recommendation is that all contractors use the PSNC website as their starting point for their main reference source of information. Other sources can be used, however the information quoted soon becomes repetitious and the group felt the PSNC site was the most comprehensive. The various sections on the PSNC site are regularly updated and provide links to other information and handy tools that you can use to keep records required to qualify for payment throughout the year. Click here for a direct link to the PSNC Quality Payments webpage.
Information includes:
Additionally the group would like to qualify the following points that may not be clear in the scheme details as follows: