PJ, March 2025, Vol 314, No 7995

Almost 80% of pharmacies ‘unsustainable’, finds NHS-commissioned economic review

Results of the economic analysis by Frontier Economics and IQVIA were considered in negotiations over the community pharmacy contract, details of which were announced on 31 March 2025.…

Community pharmacy funding boosted by £617m in two-year contract

Community Pharmacy England has announced that a £193m write-off of historic margin overspend has also been agreed with the government.…

PJ view: Pharmacy schools must reclaim past progress in closing MPharm awarding gap

Pharmacy schools must take action against the widening MPharm ethnicity awarding gap before it has a significant impact on the sector and its ability to serve diverse patient populations.…

Pharmacy and GP contracts should ‘encourage collaboration’, says think tank report

A report published by The King’s Fund has urged that national contracts for general practice and community pharmacy should be “coherent and complementary” in order to move care into the community.…

Medicines derived from UK blood plasma distributed to NHS hospitals for ‘first time in a generation’

More than 250,000 litres of plasma from UK donors have been sent to human protein product manufacturer Octapharma to produce NHS medicines for the first time since a 1998 ban.…

Spotlight: MPharm ethnicity awarding gap rewidens

In this Spotlight episode of The PJ Pod, we discuss The Pharmaceutical Journal’s latest analysis of MPharm awarding gap data from 2021/2022 and 2022/2023.…

Ethnicity awarding gap for UK pharmacy graduates has widened since COVID-19 pandemic

Exclusive: Data analysed by The Pharmaceutical Journal show that the ethnicity awarding gap for MPharm graduates widened to 11 percentage points in 2021/2022 and 2022/2023.…

The ethnicity awarding gap: ‘not a problem that is easily solved’

Narrowing of the ethnicity awarding gap for UK pharmacy graduates recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic has not been sustained.…

HRT pre-payment certificates have saved patients more than £11m in first year, report finds

The NHS Business Services Authority found that, following the introduction of pre-payment certificates, the number of patients paying for three or more HRT medications fell by nearly 22% from 2022/2023 to 2023/2024.…

‘Urgent’ need for community pharmacy to play a role in medicines homecare services, review says

The independent review, commissioned by the chief pharmaceutical officer for Scotland, also said that key performance indicators for medicines homecare are “widely viewed as not fit for purpose”.…