Dispensing Pool Arrangements
Published: 09/10/24
A big part of each pharmacy’s workload is the dispensing of prescriptions for people on behalf of the NHS.
Whilst the reimbursement element of our financial package covers the cost of the medicines which are bought and used as part of patient care, there needs to be a way of paying (remunerating) the pharmacy for the time and effort which goes into physically making the prescriptions up and ensuring that the medicines prescribed are safe and effective (i.e. the staff, expertise, and resources costs).
To do this fairly, each pharmacy gets a proportion of a monthly “dispensing pool” of £13.964m based on the number of prescriptions and instalments they do. Instalment and “normal” dispensings along with care home dispensings are all given the same weighting (i.e. each counts as “1”) when adding up a pharmacy’s dispensing activity. Very simply, the principle is that if your pharmacy does 1% of the prescription work carried out across the whole network, you get 1% of the funding pot.
In October, eligible contractors will receive a one-off payment as a proportionate share of a £6.761m backdated payment pot to rebalance April to August 2024 dispensings in line with the year’s Dispensing Pool annualised budget. Subsequent quarters will be paid as a proportionate share of the £167.569m pot.
It would be extremely challenging to calculate what percentage of total dispensing a pharmacy has done in a given month during the payment process – it’s impossible to know how many prescriptions have been dispensed across the whole country until the very end of the process. To manage this, the average of the last three months’ activity is calculated for each pharmacy and used as a reference to set the Dispensing Pool payment for each quarter as follows:
| Average dispensing taken for months: | Sets Dispensing Pool payment for months: | Bank payment at month-end: |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 23 – Nov 23 | Apr 24 - June 24 | June 24- Aug 24 |
| Dec 23 - Feb 24 | July 24 - Sept 24 | Sept 24 - Nov 24 |
| Mar 24 – May 24 | Oct 24 - Dec 24 | Dec 24 - Feb 25 |
| Jun 24 - Aug 24 | Jan 25 - Mar 25 | Mar 25 – May 24 |
| Sept 24 – Nov 24 | Apr 25 - June 25 | June 25 - Aug 25 |
