Yearly Archives: 2025

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has published details of its ongoing work and plans to improve the management of medicines supply issues. This includes a commitment to consulting on the introduction of pharmacist flexibilities to supply alternatives when a medicine is in short supply. The new policy paper, Managing a robust and [...]

The post DHSC outlines work to improve medicines supply appeared first on Community Pharmacy England.

NHS England has today published the Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS) Antimicrobial stewardship – Pharmacy First consultations – Clinical Audit. Completion of the audit, as well as sharing anonymised data with NHS England and incorporating any learnings from the audit into future practice by the end of 31st March 2026, is a quality criterion in the [...]

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The Government is advising community pharmacy owners to take action to prepare for the upcoming national switch-off of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), which is due to be fully decommissioned by January 2027. In a letter to the sector, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Health and Social Care has outlined [...]

The post Pharmacies to prepare for national digital phoneline switchover appeared first on Community Pharmacy England.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) has seen an increase in the number of prescriptions from patients using the “HRT only prescription prepayment certificate” prescription charge exemption category for products that are not covered by the HRT Prescription Prepayment Certificate (HRT PPC). In the 12 months between June 2024 and May 2025, the NHSBSA received over 200k [...]

The post Medicines not covered by the HRT PPC appeared first on Community Pharmacy England.

The National Patient Prescription Tracking Service (NPPTS) enables patients to access and track their prescriptions online through the NHS App or their NHS account (by logging in on the NHS website). NPPTS is a feature of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) that utilises a combination of Spine and Pharmacy IT supplier systems’ information to provide item and [...]

The post Rollout of prescription status info in the NHS App continues appeared first on Community Pharmacy England.