PSNC grants £15m in advance funding to community pharmacies

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiation Committee (PSNC) has announced that community pharmacies in England would receive a further fifty-million pounds in advance funding in recognition of the crisis to cashflow they are facing, caused by the pandemic. Contractors will receive the funding at the same time as their planned NHS Business Services Authority payment, scheduled for the 1 June.

Chief Executive of PSNC, Simon Dukes, stated: “Our requests for cashflow assistance have once again led to a cash injection and combined with the fifteen-million pounds increase in medicines prices in June, this should help to ease some of the immediate cash flow and procurement pressures on businesses. In addition, our funding bid to cover the unprecedented costs that contractors are currently facing is now with HM Treasury, and while it is frustrating that these negotiations are taking some time, we are continuing to press for answers. We do not know how this pandemic will develop and the long-term effects it will have on pharmacy, but we will continue to gather evidence of contractor’s costs and other financial pressures, and to press for margin adjustments and further financial assistance wherever we have a case to do so.”

Claire Anderson, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society England Chair, stated: “While this funding may help pharmacies stay open to provide vital services and healthcare advice to the public, it’s another stopgap measure and should be coming from new money rather than an advance payment. The Government should review this as part of a fair funding settlement for the longer term. The ‘new normal’ for the NHS coping with COVID-19 will need a contract which makes the most of pharmacist’s clinical skills to support patients, improve medicines safety and help people stay healthy and out of hospital. The NHS and Government now need to back pharmacy and build on the incredible work the profession during COVID-19 to support patient care.”

Chief executive, the National Pharmacy Association, Mark Lyonette, stated: Today’s
announcement make talks on cost recovery even more urgent. We need assurances on the medium-term position because this new advance effectively increases the level of pharmacies’ debt to Government. Many independent pharmacies will struggle to pay it back and should never be asked to do so. This advance will make it easier for our members to pay their bills, for now, and to keep vital services going. But it isn’t new money and doesn’t get to the root of the funding problems. Pharmacists are bearing a heavy financial burden in order to keep people safe and well. As caring health care professionals, pharmacists have kept their doors open, often at considerable personal cost. They have done this trusting that the Health Secretary will make good on his pledge to strain every sinew to support pharmacies.”