OBJECTIVES: English pharmacies can claim money from the National Health Service (NHS) to provide New Medicine Service (NMS). A NMS aims to improve medication adherence and consists of two pharmacist-led consultations conducted after the patient is issued a new medicine for one of four therapy areas. Both the number of NMS a pharmacy can claim for and the reimbursement tariff (£20-£28 per NMS) are calculated based on their monthly number of dispensed prescriptions (1). While there are limited English health-economic data available for NMS, models suggest they are cost-effective for some therapy areas (2, 3). We analysed the uptake of NMS in England and opportunity loss associated with suboptimal uptake.

METHODS: Monthly dispensing data for English pharmacies that had (i) submitted NMS data to the NHS Prescription Services for the whole of 2016 and (ii) made at least one NMS claim during this period were retrieved from the NHS Business Authority. This resulted in monthly data for the calendar year 2016 being retrieved for 9,609 pharmacies. The data were used to calculate the number of NMS each pharmacy could be reimbursed for and their reimbursement tariff. Opportunity loss was calculated by subtracting the number of NMS declared from the maximum number the pharmacy could have claimed, and multiplying the subtraction with the pharmacy’s reimbursement tariff.

RESULTS: The median English pharmacy only claimed for 17% of the NMS they could have, resulting in a median annual opportunity loss of £8,340 per pharmacy (£0-£16,780). The total opportunity loss across English pharmacies was £83,037,532.

CONCLUSIONS: There is suboptimal uptake of NMS in English pharmacies, which is associated with lost revenue for individual pharmacies. More studies are needed to understand the impact of this on patient outcomes and indirect NHS cost.

REFERENCES:

(1) PSNC (2017) https://psnc.org.uk/funding-and-statistics/funding-distribution/advanced-service-payments/

(2) Wright (2016) https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/12/rapid-evdnc-rev-dec-16.pdf

(3) Brinkmann (2015) http://www.valueinhealthjournal.com/article/S1098-3015(15)04414-9/pdf