NHS commissioning and funding

Competition watchdog issues £100m in fines for liothyronine tablet price hikes

A series of price increases between 2009 and 2017 led to liothyronine tablets being placed on the NHS 'drop list' and some patients having their treatment stopped, the Competition and Markets Authority said.…

Kent LPC receives extra cash to increase GP referrals to pharmacist consultation service

The money will be used to support GP surgeries with training and backfill costs for implementation of the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service.…

Nearly half of Pharmacy Integration Fund for 2019–2020 spent elsewhere in NHS

Exclusive: Of the £40m budgeted for the Pharmacy Integration Fund, just £20.9m was used for projects within the fund.…

Collaboration not competition: the NHS masterplan to keep patients out of hospital

Health challenges and inequalities have been exacerbated by COVID-19, meaning providing joined up health and social care that keeps people out of hospital is more important than ever, and is central to the government’s blueprint for the NHS in England. Pharmacy teams are already playing an integra…

Pharmacy ‘first ports of call’ are disappearing in struggling communities

A disproportionate number of community pharmacies are closing in the most deprived areas of England, analysis by The Pharmaceutical Journal has found. Without better funding for the sector, the health inequalities exposed by the pandemic could widen even further.…

Generic drug price increases of up to 1,700% have cost the NHS £76m

An investigation by The Pharmaceutical Journal reveals that drug tariff prices for 33 generic “Category A” medicines were found to have more than doubled between July 2018 and October 2020.…

Revealed: the generic price hikes increasing the NHS drugs bill

Far from being a money saver, the generic medicines market has cost the NHS an additional £76m over the past two years.…

England has lowest number of community pharmacies in five years, figures show

Closures in 2019/2020 have resulted in the lowest number of community pharmacies in England since 2015/2016.…

Pharmacy negotiator to write to health secretary to ‘correct assumptions’ in contract impact assessment

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee is to write to Matt Hancock to “correct assumptions” made in a government impact assessment of the current community pharmacy contract.…

Government impact assessment of pharmacy contract warned it could cause closures

The government was warned that some pharmacies could “become financially unviable and close” because of cost pressures related to launching new services under the five-year community pharmacy contract, a freedom of information request from The Pharmaceutical Journal h…