NMS: Voluntary quarterly data continues

NHS England is asking pharmacy owners to continue to voluntarily submit New Medicine Service (NMS) quarterly summary data to the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) for Quarter 1 (Q1) 2023/24 (April to June 2023).

The mandatory requirement to submit this data has been suspended since 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

NHS England want to continue collection of the quarterly returns to provide baseline data to support a long-term evaluation that will be conducted as part of ongoing work to expand the scope of NMS.

We have agreed with NHS England that the quarterly returns will continue to be on a voluntary basis, with Q1 (April to June 2023) as the third quarter to be reported.

We would like to thank all pharmacy owners who submitted NMS quarterly summary data for January to March 2023.

Voluntary submissions can be made via the NHSBSA website, where a reporting spreadsheet is also available for head offices to use who are able to submit data on behalf of multiple pharmacies.

We are continuing to work with NHS England, NHSBSA, and IT system suppliers on the development of an Application Programming Interface (API) for NMS. This will enable this transfer of data to be made as part of the service payment claim that will then make the need for these retrospective quarterly returns redundant.

If you have a query regarding this voluntary data collection and needs to discuss this further, please contact the NHSBSA Provider Assurance Team at pharmacysupport@nhsbsa.nhs.uk to arrange a follow up call.