New Medicines Service-making the most of it

In addition to the very welcome opportunity to use our professional knowledge to patient benefit, the NMS is undoubtedly an opportunity for pharmacists to earn some worthwhile additional income.

Firstly, any pharmacy that implements the service, regardless of their prescription volume,  by fully completing at least six new medicine service reviews, by 31st March 2012, will gain a £750 implementation fee, so the first few reviews of 2011/12 are highly worthwhile financially. Of course I am not suggesting that pharmacists deliberately only undertake six reviews between now and March 31st, but the implementation fee is quite a big incentive payment to get started.

For those who are ready and keen to deliver the new service, it strikes me that accurate record keeping will help pharmacists to maximise their revenue from providing the new service.    The PSNC Pharmabase has been designed for this purpose. Although it may not be possible to easily ensure how many NMS reviews are undertaken and completed each month, it is clear that as the payments for NMS are banded, so just one more completed review in a month can increase , even double the payment to be received, for a busy dispensing pharmacy by as much as £250 .

So, always knowing where you are with completed reviews, and when close to the upper limit of a target band in any particular month, striving to get into the next target band above could be time very well spent!