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Pharmacy: Finance

Question for Department of Health and Social Care

UIN 20979, tabled on 12 April 2024

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the medication reimbursement mechanism for community pharmacists.

Answered on

19 April 2024

Through the medicine margin survey, the Department assesses whether the reimbursement arrangements pay pharmacy contractors as agreed as part of the community pharmacy contractual framework (CPCF). The medicine margin survey considers what pharmacies paid for medicines by looking at their invoices compared to the amount reimbursed by the National Health Service. Where the survey finds that they have been underpaid, we increase the pharmacy contractors’ payments, and where they have been overpaid, we decrease payments.

Furthermore, where pharmacies cannot purchase products at or below the Drug Tariff NHS reimbursement price, Community Pharmacy England can request that the Department reassesses the reimbursement price. If a new reimbursement price is issued, this is known as a concessionary price.