Final transitional payment announced for Scotland
Pharmacy contractors in Scotland will be paid a share of a £1.627m
final transitional reimbursement payment (TRP) in September, it was announced
last week (PDF 80K).
The TRP was put in place to ensure that all the money transferred from
reimbursement to remuneration was paid to contractors. Originally, it
had been planned for £30m to be transferred into remuneration.
This was to be achieved through adjustments to reimbursement prices for
items in part 7 of the Drug Tariff set against new payments being made
for the minor ailments service (MAS), the public health service (PHS)
and infrastructure support.
Now, figures for the 2006-07 financial year reveal that £25.068m
was removed from reimbursement, yet the associated remuneration to contractors
only totalled £23.441m. Therefore, a balancing payment of £1.627m
is due.
Elspeth Weir, head of policy and development, Community Pharmacy Scotland,
commented: “The important thing is that we have this mechanism
in place to ensure we can get the money out.”
She suggested that the £1.627m difference could be explained by
payments for MAS and PHS being slightly lower than expected. This was
because it had been expected that the second tier of PHS would have been
in place for part of the year and because the MAS had not yet been promoted
through a national advertising campaign.
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