Request

With respect to the NHS supporting early diagnosis of cancer (Community Pharmacy) pilot

1.     How many pharmacy contractors registered for this pilot during June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023?

2.     How many pharmacy contractors are currently registered for this pilot?

3.     How many claims for payment for the service have been received by community pharmacies during June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023?

4.     How many claims have community pharmacies made cumulatively for this pilot to date?

5.     How much have community pharmacies been paid for their work as part of the pilot during June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2023?

6.     How much have community pharmacies been paid cumulatively for this pilot to date? 

Response

Question 1

Our User Research team have confirmed that 8 pharmacies registered for the service in July 2023- no other pharmacies have registered in June 2023, or between August and December 2023.

Question 2

9 pharmacies are registered in total for the pilot as of January 2024.

Questions 3 & 4

We are unable to answer these questions- This is because the NHSBSA only receive monthly confirmation of amounts to be paid to pharmacies participating in the Early Diagnosis of Cancer local scheme, as confirmed by the regional Integrated Care Boards the pharmacies are located in. The amounts confirmed are not broken down into the number of claims the pharmacies have made in order to be entitled to those payments. Therefore, we cannot definitively confirm how many claims for payment have been received, or made cumulatively, for the pilot to date.

Questions 5 & 6

This information is held within the monthly Management Information Spreadsheet (MIS) Pharmacy Contractor reports, for which data is currently available up until October 2023.

All the reports for the months requested (that are currently available) have been published in previous FOI’s;

June 2023’s Pharmacy Contractor report was published in FOI-01426 - https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01426

July, August and September 2023’s Pharmacy Contractor report was published in FOI-01579 - https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01579

October 2023’s Pharmacy Contractor report was published in FOI-01673 - https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01673

Any payments made to a pharmacy contractor within the respective month are listed under the column Local_Scheme_21 within each pharmacy contractor spreadsheet. Please note that payments have only been made in June 2023, July 2023 and September 2023, based on the data within the MIS spreadsheets. We would also state as a caveat that any payments made may be subject to adjustments in further months.