Request

Pharmacies which planned to participate in the Pharmacy first service could claim an initial fixed sum of £2,000.

From February 2024, every participating pharmacy could claim also claim a fixed sum of £1,000 per month in addition to the payment of £15 for each PF service provided.

May I request the following information, for December 2023, January 2024 and February 2024 laid out as:

Column1 Month/Year Column2 ODS Code Column3 ICB Code Column 4 ICB Name Column5 Pharmacy Name (owner name) Column6 Pharmacy Trading Name Column7 Pharmacy Address Column8 Pharmacy Post Code Columnn value of Fixed payment made
Column10 number of pharmacy first consultations claimed Column11 number of pharmacy first consultations paid Column 12 payment for pharmacy first consultation made (excluding fixed sum payment)

I understand that pharmacy contractors could submit late claims for Pharmacy First services delivered in February and the deadline is up to 11.59pm on Monday 25th March 2024. Could you confirm that these late submission are included in the data I receive (presumably all these late claims you receive will go into the February data?)

Date range: 01/12/2023 - 28/02/2024

Response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information and notes explaining it is attached.

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data.

NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for Pharmacy Contractors, Appliance Contractors, Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to Dispensing Doctors and Personal Administration). This involves processing over 1 billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

Data source
Source System – Insight Data Warehouse.

Time period
December 2023 to February 2024 for Pharmacy Contractors

This dataset FOI 01863 has 3 files – December 2023, January 2024 and February 2024.

This report consists of a management information file detailing monthly Community Pharmacy payments by type of payment and contractor account.

Payments are limited to those requested, relating to the pharmacy first advanced service.

The management information file reflects the contractor's payment and prescription data associated with the Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) structure at the relevant payment date.

The columns PF_CP_CONSULTATION_FEE, PF_CP_MONTHLY_FIXED_PAY and PF_CP_VAT_VALUE are given from February 2024 as this is the point those payments commenced. Consequently, data for December 2023 and January 2024 is not held

Column 1: YEAR_MONTH Column 2: CONTRACTOR_CODE, this is the ODS code.
Column 3: see INTEGRATED_CARE_BOARD_CODE (column F) Column 4: see INTEGRATED_CARE_BOARD_NAME (column G) Column 5: see CONTRACTOR_NAME (column C) Column 6: - Pharmacy trading name is held by NHSBSA; however, we consider that this information is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of FOIA. This provides an exemption from the duty to disclose information where this is reasonable accessible to an applicant by other means.

The requested information can be reasonably accessed from: https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/contractor-details. You can use the contractor code to see the trading name for each pharmacy.

Column 7: see CONTRACTOR_ADDRESS (column D) Column 8: POSTCODE (column E) Column 9: PF_INITIAL_FIXED_PAYMENT (column H)

For February 2024 report only: Column 9: PF_INITIAL_FIXED_PAYMENT, see PF_CP_MONTHLY_FIXED_PAY (column J). There are two fixed payments, the report includes both.
Column 12: PF_CP_CONSULTATION_FEE (column K)

Column 10: We do not currently report on the number of consultations claimed. The reporting information we have is based on the payments made (processed data) rather than the number claimed by the contractor in the MYS system (unprocessed).

The NHSBSA does hold the requested information; however, we estimate that the cost of compliance with the request would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12 of the FOIA.

We estimate that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the non-central Government limit of £450. The limit has been specified in The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the NHSBSA holds the information, and locating, retrieving, extracting and checking the information.

Please see the following calculations regarding your request:

Task Approximate Staff Time (Hours)

Scoping and Investigation for Lead analyst to access and use new data tables
5.5

Scoping and Investigation for QR analyst to access and use new data tables
5.5

Estimated time for MYS and Data Warehouse staff to answer queries generated by scoping and investigation.
2

Develop standard Query Template for data extraction 5.5

QR standard Query Template for data extraction
4

Determine whether data meets specific query 2.5

Develop specific query (adapted from template)
1.5

Test Specific Query (time assumes limited prior experience with dataset)
1.5

Assemble output of query into suitable format, produce Documentation and notes (assumes use of standard or simple fields)
1.5

Review final output 1.5

Total (hours):  31

Column 11: the requested information is held by NHSBA; however, we consider that this information is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of FOIA. This provides an exemption from the duty to disclose information where this is reasonable accessible to an applicant by other means.

The number of pharmacy first consultations paid calculated easily; the data provided is the value of fees paid. Fee rates can be found in the drug tariff: https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/pharmacies-gp-practices-and-appliance-contractors/drug-tariff

Part VIC - Advanced Services (Pharmacy and Appliance Contractors) (England) NHS Pharmacy First Service ii) Clinical Pathway consultations looking at 38. 39. and 40. there is a £2000 initial fixed payment, a £15 fee per consultation, and a monthly £1000 fixed payment.

Dividing the fee paid by the fee rate in the drug tariff (for the months requested) will give you the number of fees paid.

This is reported on our website at https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/prescription-data/dispensing-data/dispensing-contractors-data, and currently has data published up to Jan-24 for the pharmacy and appliance contractor data.