Welcome to Community Pharmacy Lincolnshire News

In case you missed it: Changes to Monthly Service Transitional Payments Qualification - The requirement to do one NMS per month and be signed up for CPCS from January 2022

PSNC put out the following announcement just before Christmas last year on 22nd December, which contractors should be aware of to ensure they do not miss out on any potential income:

Drug Tariff update January 2022 – Transitional Payment adjustments

From 1 January 2022 changes to the payment levels for the Transitional Payment are being made. These changes aim to reduce the overall level of fees delivered to pharmacy contractors through Transitional Payments within the financial year 2021/22 by £5m, so that the agreed amount of CPCF funding is delivered over the course of the year. The changes to the Transitional Payments have been agreed by PSNC based on our analysis of funding delivery and the latest projections for the year. Fee levels are kept under constant review in order to ensure the full delivery of funding agreed under the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework.

The Transitional Payment was introduced as part of the five-year funding agreement in 2019/20 and recognises pharmacy contractors’ work to invest in and improve dispensing efficiency, including the training of staff in anticipation of legislative change, as well as the transformation needed in community pharmacy to deliver the vision set out in the five-year agreement. It is expected that the Transitional Payment will reduce over the course of the agreement if new services come on stream and funding is allocated to the related service fees.

From 1 January 2022 pharmacy contractors who dispense 101 prescription items or more in any month will receive a monthly Transitional Payment which consists of two separate payments – a dispensing payment and a service payment as set out in the table below.

For the pharmacy contractors to receive the monthly service payment of the transitional payment they must have:

• claimed for at least one New Medicine Service (NMS) in the previous month; and
• been registered to provide the Community Pharmacy Consultation Service (CPCS) on the Manage Your Service (MYS) platform for greater than or equal to half of the number of full days in the previous month.

Provisional GPhC Register closes 31st January 2022

Provisional registration was introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the ability of trainees completing the pharmacist pre-registration scheme in 2020 to finish their training as planned, and to sit the registration assessment as originally scheduled. The register enabled people who had completed their training to support NHS services and provide patient care effectively as provisionally-registered pharmacists, while they waited to sit the registration assessment. 

The provisional register will close on 31 January 2022, as provisionally-registered pharmacists have now had three potential opportunities to sit the registration assessment – in March, July and November 2021. Anyone still on the provisional register must have joined the main register by 1 February, otherwise they cannot work as a pharmacist after this date.  

The GPhC is urging employers to ask any provisionally registered trainees that they employ if they’ve applied for full registration and encourage those who haven’t, to do so straight away. Currently (18 January 2022) there are 63 people who are yet to submit an application despite being eligible to register as a pharmacist. 

Provisionally-registered pharmacists who have already submitted a complete application should be able to join the pharmacist register by 1 February and continue to work without interruption.

Stock Shortage and Serious Shortage Protocols

Unfortunately, shortages of medicines are still a frequent issue that can hinder pharmacy teams’ efforts to dispense medicines in a timely manner, having an impact on both pharmacy teams’ workload and on patients.

In order to assist you we produced some simple guidance to support pharmacy teams to manage stock shortages, and will update this guidance as processes change.

• Management of Stock Shortages for Pharmacy Teams (Feb 2021 V1)

You can find more detailed information, including how to report medicines shortages or pricing issues (for example where stock cannot be obtained at the Drug Tarrif price) on the PSNC Medicines Shortages webpage:

• https://psnc.wpengine.com/dispensing-supply/supply-chain/medicine-shortages/

NMS Guidance

You may recall that North Staffordshire LPC kindly shared some NMS delivery guidance videos for gout, glaucoma and Parkinson's which are available on our website here. An osteoporosis video will be available within the next few weeks.

We have been invited to take part in some more live sessions as follows:

• Heart failure - Monday 24th January - 7.30pm
• Epilepsy - Monday 31st January - 7.30pm

Each session runs for just under half-an-hour.

The link to register for all three is:
https://psnc.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5a89fd5ddb29c9a4ab7a16d54&id=d6c08b0bc2&e=49c90b4d38

If you are unable to attend the live sessions, the material will be available on our website in a few weeks.