Care Home Element

Published: 04/09/23

From April 1st, 2023, until September 30th 2023, there is a separate dispensing pool for the dispensing of prescriptions for patients living in care homes.

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For pharmacies that do a little care home dispensing in relation to the rest of their work (less than 2.5% of all dispensing), this is treated in the same way as any other activity and each prescription item will count towards the standard dispensing pool payment as described earlier. In effect, no action is taken by the pricing department.

For those who dedicate a larger part of their business to fulfilling care home prescriptions (over 2.5% of all dispensing), the prescription items do not count towards their dispensing pool payment. Instead, they are reimbursed from a separate quarterly pool of £1.107m depending on how much activity has been carried out nationally, in exactly the same way as the larger dispensing pool is divided up. The same reference months are also used to set the care home element payments each quarter.

There is a special marker in NHS systems to help identify care home patients, so their prescriptions can be analysed separately from all other dispensing activity – although it is all done at the same time.

These arrangements will change from 1st October 2023 to recognise the integration of the care home dispensing payment with the dispensing pool payment.

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