We recommend that all community pharmacy contractors register for the PSNC newsletter which contains updates from their site, providing subscribers with details and links to the most relevant news articles. The newsletter covers a range of topics relating to NHS community pharmacy such as changes to contractual requirements, Drug Tariff updates and funding arrangements, as well as updates to the wider healthcare landscape. Those signed up to this list also receive price concession alerts and updates.

An engagement and set up payment is available for GP CPCS for all pharmacies as per below.

PSNC website at https://psnc.org.uk/services-commissioning/advanced-services/community-pharmacist-consultation-service/cpca-funding-and-claiming-payment/

GP referral pathway – Engagement and setup payment

Contractors registered to provide the CPCS can claim a £300 engagement and setup payment if they undertake a range of actions to get ready for rolling out the referral pathway in their area by 30th June 2021.

The requirements are detailed in Annex F of the updated service specification and claims need to be made via the NHSBSA Manage Your Service (MYS) portal by 5th July 2021.

If you have not already done so, please arrange a virtual meeting for your constituent pharmacies as soon as possible to share and discuss the CPCS slide pack. You should also ensure that discussions take place around the need for and importance of the referral pathways to ensure patients are efficiently and immediately signposted back to the practice if a pharmacy is unable to help them.

Annex F also provides you with further details including what to do if a constituent pharmacy is unable to attend the meeting.

Once the meeting has taken place can you please forward the date of the meeting to the LPC add to our records if you have not already done so, 

details of completed engagement events are included in this table.

Also please remember to forward details of referral pathways so they can be added to our records and shared accordingly.

This GP CPCS Cascade slide deck has been shared by NHSE North Cumbria and North East ICS to support your local conversations.

If any Gp practices in your area have approached you as a community pharmacy regarding CPCS then you can work with that individual practice towards going live for CPCS. You do not have to wait for the full PCN to co-ordinate live dates.

Practices ready to implement GP CPCS, should please use the below link to declare they are ready to go live, and an electronic solution will be activated within 5 working days.

https://patientplatform.typeform.com/to/af25XtCX

Details have been shared by NHSE in below documents, as to how pharmacists should escalate CPCS referrals out of hours,

In hour referrals should continue to be to patients GP Practice.

How to escalate a CPCS referral out of hours.

Annex C - North East 2020