Request

Dear Information Manager, Under the terms of the FOIA 2000, I kindly request the following information on the Discharge Medicine Service (DMS). When summary data is uploaded by pharmacy contractors onto the Manage Your Services portal, they are asked the following: "Did the referral from the NHS Trust meet the minimum essential dataset requirements?" I would like to know how many referrals from NHS Trusts were marked as NOT meeting the minimum essential dataset requirements. Please could I get a monthly breakdown starting from the launch of DMS to the most recently available information? Thank you.

Response

A copy of the information is attached.

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.

Time period The data contains monthly declared data covering February 2021 - 25th April 2022 which is the most recent data available.

Please note - February 2021 had no referrals declaring that the NHS trust did not meet the Discharge Medicine Service (DMS) minimum essential dataset requirement.

Dataset This dataset contains data held on the Discharge Medicine Service (DMS) uploaded by pharmacy contractors onto the Manage Your Services portal for the question:

‘Did the referral from the NHS Trust meet the minimum essential dataset requirements?’

The data provides a monthly breakdown which starts from the launch of DMS to the most recently available information for how many referrals from NHS Trusts were marked as not meeting the minimum essential dataset requirements.

Please note - This is not to be interpreted as an indication that a pharmacy did or did not receive a DMS payment fee.