Pharmacy First: Summary of changes from 1st June 2025
From today (1st June 2025) several changes take effect for the Pharmacy First service following the announcement of these as part of the contractual settlement for 2025/26. Below is a reminder of these changes.
‘Bundling’ requirements for the monthly payment
From today, the bundling requirements for Pharmacy First come into force, which impacts on whether pharmacy owners are entitled to the variable monthly payment (please see below) for the service.
Pharmacy owners must be registered and able to deliver the Hypertension Case Finding Service*, the Pharmacy Contraception Service (PCS) and the Pharmacy First service, in addition to delivering the minimum number of Clinical pathway consultations (see below) to achieve the variable monthly payment.
Read our Pharmacy First bundling FAQs
Variable monthly payment
From today, a banded approach will be added to the monthly payment:
- £500 for those providing 20-29 Clinical pathways consultations within a month; and
- £1,000 for those pharmacies that provide 30 or more Clinical pathways consultations within a month.
Pharmacy owners must also be registered and able to deliver the three services*, as detailed above, to be entitled to the variable monthly payment.
*Distance selling pharmacy (DSP) premises are exempt from the requirement of being registered and able to provide the Hypertension Case-Finding Service.
Changes to the claim period
To accommodate that change to the monthly payment within NHSBSA’s systems, for Pharmacy First consultations provided from today, pharmacy owners will need to claim for them within one month from the end of the month in which they were provided.
For example, Pharmacy First consultations provided in June 2025 will need to be claimed on MYS by the last day of July 2025.
This also means that from today pharmacy owners who have not yet claimed for Pharmacy First consultations carried out in March, April and May 2025 must claim these by 11.59pm on 30th June 2025 to receive payment.
The recent change to allow an additional twelve months to claim payment where an issue with IT systems prevented the submission of a claim will remain.
New caps for June 2025
From today, new Pharmacy First Clinical Pathways band assignments and monthly caps for June 2025 come into force.
