NHS England seek your views on central procurement of flu vacs

The NHS Vaccination Strategy, published in December last year, set out an intention for NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to explore the potential benefits of adopting centralisation of adult flu vaccine procurement and supply.

If that approach is adopted, it would mean flu vaccine used in the Flu Vaccination Advanced service by community pharmacies and also vaccine used by general practices would be centrally purchased by UKHSA, with it being supplied free-of-charge to pharmacies and practices for use in the NHS flu vaccination programme.

This approach would mirror that used for all vaccines in the other NHS vaccination programmes. Pharmacy owners would still need to purchase their own vaccine for use in non-NHS services they offer, e.g. private vaccination services and occupational health services.

As part of their commitment to consider the use of central procurement, NHS England are undertaking some exploratory work looking into the potential benefits and risks of centralised adult flu vaccine procurement and supply, and they wish to seek the views of pharmacy owners and general practices on how any potential changes to the current supply chain model could:

• increase or decrease efficiencies;
• enable the NHS to respond to in-season programme changes;
• direct supply into areas of low uptake and target specific areas and populations; and
• create more equity in how vaccines are distributed around the country.

They will also, separately, be seeking the views of manufacturers of flu vaccine and wholesalers.

Pharmacy owners are being invited to complete an online questionnaire which seeks to understand the current arrangements that pharmacies have in place with manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors, as well as administrative workload and wastage of vaccine.

NHS England has told us the exploratory work with the market is designed to help them understand whether centralised procurement and supply could have benefits and to help them formulate any proposals, which they would then formally consult Community Pharmacy England on, in line with the usual arrangements for NHS matters.

Pharmacy owners can voluntarily complete the anonymous NHS England survey, if they wish. The survey is open for four weeks and will close on Tuesday 17th December 2024.

NHS England central flu vaccine procurement and supply provider engagement survey

Pharmacy owners wishing to complete the survey do not need to answer all the questions if they would prefer not to answer some of them.

Commenting on the publication of the survey, Alastair Buxton, Director of NHS Services at Community Pharmacy England said:

“A potential move to central procurement of adult flu vaccines for NHS programmes would have pros and cons for pharmacy owners which are dependent on the design of any distribution system for the vaccine. However, at this early stage in their consideration of whether to pursue central procurement, NHS England do not have a proposal to share on how vaccine could be distributed. The efficiency of any distribution system from a pharmacy owner perspective and the equity of distribution of vaccine across all providers within the flu vaccination programme would be key matters on which to judge any future proposals from the NHS.

“The survey seeks a lot of data which pharmacy owners will likely consider to be commercially sensitive, such as pricing of vaccines, discounts achieved and percentage split between NHS and private vaccinations administered. We have provided frank feedback to NHS England on the questions they have posed in the survey, which noted that should pharmacy owners have time to complete the questionnaire, it is very unlikely many, will be minded to share commercially sensitive data with NHS England.”