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Greater investment in community pharmacy services could ultimately save the NHS billions of pounds, according to results of economic analysis commissioned by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA).
The analysis, published on 2 October 2025 and carried out by the University of York’s Health Economics Consortium, predicted a potential £1.2bn of savings and a “further £2.7bn of value in health outcomes”, based on expansion of current NHS pharmacy services and the commissioning of new pharmaceutical care services.
In particular, the NPA said that expanding the new medicine service (NMS) could save £370m and add £2.3bn of value in terms of “expected health gain”.
For every £1 spent on the NMS, “there is a cost saving of £4.60 and a health gain valued by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence at £28.57”, it added.
Currently, there are around 5.1 million NMS consultations each year, which already generate cost savings of £661m compared with not having the service, the report found.
It said that if the number of people seen under the NMS increased by 10%, this would result in an additional £66.1m in cost savings.
However, the researchers noted that the NMS is “currently within the fixed envelope of the community pharmacy contractual framework” and “needs to be funded outside of this” to implement the projected savings.
The researchers said that if every area in England delivered the NHS discharge medicine service “to the same potential as the currently highest delivering area”, an additional annual cost saving of £26.3m could be made — as well as a reduction in hospital bed days by almost 1 million days.
The report noted that literature on the discharge medicines service suggests that it can help avoid a potential 0.089 readmissions per discharge medicine review (DMR) completed.
“Using an average hospital readmission cost of £1,853, this results in a cost saving of £165.68 per DMR,” it said.
Potential barriers to this include a reliance on hospitals to refer patients into the service and a “disconnect between community pharmacies and the rest of the health system”, the report said.
The report also found that prescribing reviews for people taking ten or more medicines could offer net savings of nearly £620m, while the routine provision of personalised asthma plans could prevent hospital stays and deaths, providing cost savings of more than £70m.
The NPA said that the data from the report “show potential benefits for patients equivalent to over 100,000 years of additional healthy life per annum”.
The researchers based their findings on a literature review, which focused on problematic polypharmacy and medicines safety; medication reviews and deprescribing; staff costs and time; and adherence to medication.
Henry Gregg, chief executive of the NPA, said: “This is a win-win-win. The public purse gains from a substantial return on investment, the NHS gains because we can relieve pressure on hospital beds and, above all, patients enjoy longer, healthier lives.
“Patients using our medicines advice services already benefit from reduced pain, reduced hospital length of stay and improved overall physical and mental wellbeing,” he added.
“But we can go much further if properly funded, to help patients and taxpayers. I think of this as a kind of ‘medicines reset’ for a population that isn’t currently getting best use from their prescribed medicines.”
Lead researcher Nick Hex, director of NHS consulting at the York Health Economics Consortium, said: “Our report shows that more investment in community pharmacist support could result in very substantial benefits to patients and better value for money for the NHS.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Community pharmacists play a vital role in shifting care out of hospitals and into the community.
“We are working to turn around a decade of underfunding and neglect that has left the sector on the brink of collapse — including by giving the sector a funding boost of almost £500m.
“Our plan for change will see more services closer to home and give pharmacists a greater role in keeping people well in the community, including by streamlining and optimising dispensing of medicines.”
