At the PSNC conference last week for LPC Chairmen and Secretaries, Sue Sharpe told us that 9000 of the 11,000 community pharmacies in England and Wales, at the last count, had delivered the New Medicines Service (NMS) to patients.
 
This is indeed something to be proud of! Great for patients and an important income stream for community pharmacy.
 
The service is only funded, however, until March 2013 - and it is really important that the service evaluates well if it is to be continued...so my plea to contractors is to "keep up the good work!"
 
 The more evidence of service success at evaluation, the better... 

I've been alerted by the PSNC that South Tyneside PCT area is consistently amongst the lowest 10 PCT areas to complete NMS claims...

I've checked the NHS BSA website, which is in the public domain, and sure enough contractors in South Tyneside are simply not doing enough NMS - indeed only about 12 contractors a month are submitting any claim! I'm not sure why this is the case - as the LPC has constantly spoken about the need to engage with the service and even ran a survey to explore contractor opinions of it; which must have raised the profile! I can only assume that the claim mechanism, which has recently changed, dissuaded contractors from engagement with this important new clinical service?

Perhaps now that the banding structure has changed things might improve?? Let's hope so, because unless pharmacy ups its game with this service it might simply wither on the vine...