First enhanced service specifications announced
Enhanced service specifications
The enhanced service specifications released this
week are as follows:
EN1 Supervised administration
(consumption of prescribed medicines)
EN2 Needle and syringe exchange
EN3 On-demand availability of specialist drugs
(availability of palliative care or other specialist medicines)
EN4 Stop smoking
EN5 Care home (support and advice on
storage, supply and administration of drugs and appliances)
EN6 Medicines assessment and compliance
support
EN7 Medication review (full clinical
review)
EN8 Minor ailment service
EN9 Out-of-hours (access to medicines)
EN10 Supplementary prescribing by pharmacists
|
Advising care homes on medicines storage is
included in the specifications
|
Template specifications for enhanced services forming the third tier
of the new
community pharmacy contract were released by the Pharmaceutical
Services Negotiating Committee this week, in conjunction with the Department
of Health and the NHS Confederation.
This is the first set of ten specifications
for the services, which will be commissioned by primary care trusts
in response to local needs
(see
Panel right). The PSNC says that a further set of templates will be published
shortly.
Regarding payment for these services, the PSNC says that following discussions
with the NHS Confederation and the DoH it has been decided not to proceed with
an agreement of national benchmark prices. Instead, the services will be priced
at a local level, with the help of a pricing toolkit currently under development.
Sue Sharpe, chief executive of the PSNC said: “Our chief focus in negotiating
the new contract was to ensure that the funding needed to provide a fair return
for the pharmacy service was secure in the national contract. We fought hard
but successfully to achieve this. We believe that the development of an agreed
pricing toolkit for enhanced services by the PSNC, the Department of Health and
the NHS Confederation will deliver the best support for LPCs, contractors and
PCTs.”
The pricing toolkit is expected to be published shortly. |
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Pharmaceutical Journal
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