Request

‘May I request the following: The number of COVID vaccinations carried out and payments made for these vaccinations to individual pharmacies, listed by their ODS code and with full postal address details.

Could you provide the data since the start of the COVID vaccination program until October 2023 in EXCEL format please. To be absolutely clear, the data should be :

Column1--Administration Month Column2--ODS Code Column3--Pharmacy Name Column4--Pharmacy Trading Name Column5--Pharmacy Address Column6--Pharmacy Post Code Column7--Number of Vaccinations Claimed Column8--Number of Vaccinations Paid Column9--Payment Amount GBP’

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

The NHSBSA calculates payments for covid vaccinations to Pharmacies and Primary Care Network (PCN) providers in England.

Covid vaccination data is keyed in via Point of Care (POC) Systems and they are transferred to the NHSBSA Manage Your Service (MYS) application.

Each month, vaccine providers submit claims to request payment based on the data that has been transferred into MYS. This request is limited to claims which have been paid.

When considering the nature of the vaccine data there are several ways it can be reported over time:

• Administration Month - This is the month in which the vaccine was administered to the patient.

• Payment Month - This is the month in which the payment was made dispenser of the vaccine.

• Note that all payments for Pharmacies are paid one month later than those for PCN providers.

• Keying Month - This is the month in which the vaccine record first appeared on the MYS system.

• Submission/Claim Month - This is the month in which the claim for payment for a vaccination occurred.

For example, suppose that a PCN patient is given a covid vaccination dose 1 in January (Administration Month) and the record is keyed into a POC system during February (Keying Month).

The Provider is allowed to claim for keying during February in the first 5 days of March, but they're a little late and authorise the claim on the 7th of March (Submission Month); as the claim is outside the submission window it is not paid in March, it will instead be paid during April (Payment Month).

Another example could be a Pharmacy patient given a covid vaccination dose 1 in January (Administration Month), keyed in January (Keying Month), then submitted in February (Submission Month) and then payments are calculated in February, however as this is for a pharmacy the payments are held back and not paid until March (Payment Month).

For the purposes of this request, we have chosen to report by Administration Month.

Data included in this request is limited to vaccinations carried out by Pharmacies only.

Data included in this request is also limited to vaccinations administered between January 2021 and March 2021 inclusive and between April 2022 and October 2023 inclusive.

The latest data used is a snapshot of the MYS system data that was taken on 7th November 2023. This is the snapshot of data taken after the October 2023 submission period that was used to calculate payments. Pharmacy name and address are as held in the NHSBSA data warehouse for the given administration month.

This payment data does not include any adjustments made by NHSBSA Provider Assurance as part of post payment verification exercise. These adjustments are made at account level and may relate to several months of activity.

Payment data includes payments made and those scheduled for payment in the future.

Payments comprise an Item of Service fee and potentially a Supplementary fee. Payments do not relate to the value of the drugs dispensed.

The total used for the payment calculation may not match the totals shown in 'live' POC systems or MYS that continue to receive updates after the snapshot used to calculate payments was taken.

Vaccination records are limited to those which have been associated with a declaration submission. This may include late submission declarations received after the deadline for declarations such records are not processed until the next month.

Please note that some vaccinations attract a supplementary fee, so it is not possible to determine the number of vaccinations by dividing the total paid by the basic Item of Service (IoS) fee.

Please note that this request and our response is published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01552