Reminder: Hypertension case-finding service: you must use an IT system from September

NHS England previously announced that pharmacy owners will need to use an NHS approved clinical IT system to make their clinical records and payment claims for the Hypertension case-finding service from 1st September 2023.

To begin with, it is expected the following four IT suppliers will develop their systems to include functionality to support the service, but over time, it is hoped other suppliers will add the service to their systems:

These suppliers are on track to complete the assurance of their systems by 20th August 2023. NHS England local teams plan to provide reminders for pharmacy teams during the second half of August 2023.

Pharmacy owners providing the service will need to consider which system they want to use and will then need to enter into a contract with that supplier.

All service provisions within August 2023 should be claimed by the current manual MYS process by Tuesday 5th September. Claims at a later date will only be possible via one of the approved IT systems.

Further information on this change

When the Hypertension case-finding service was first launched in October 2021, the ambition was to develop IT systems that would support provision of the service.

These IT systems will allow pharmacy teams to make a clinical record for the service and the data in the record will then be used by the IT system to populate a claim for payment within the NHSBSA’s Manage Your Service (MYS) platform.

This means pharmacy owners will not need to manually transcribe data from their records into MYS, as is currently the case. The new approach mirrors what already happens for the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service and the Flu vaccination service.

The transfer of data to the MYS platform will be via an API (Application Programming Interface) to automate payment claims and reporting of the data to the NHSBSA.

The IT systems, including the APIs, must meet minimum requirements specified within NHS IT technical toolkits. In previous negotiations with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, it was agreed that once such IT systems are available, pharmacy owners must use one of these systems by an agreed deadline (in this case, 1st September 2023).

All payment claims for the service from 1st September will need to be made via the API and there will be no manual option to claim for service provisions.

The transfer of data via the API will happen throughout the month, as data is entered into the IT systems. The service provisions will then be available to view in MYS from the 1st of the following month. For example, service provisions in September will be available to view in MYS on 1st October. Pharmacy owners will then need to log into the MYS platform to check that the data matches the details in their IT system, and they will then need to submit their claim for payment.

Development of APIs for the other clinical services

Further work is scheduled this year to ensure that all the current Advanced services are supported by an API and the existing manual payment claim processes are retired.

The current timescales the NHS is working to are detailed below and will be confirmed as IT suppliers continue to engage with the development work:

• New Medicine Service – Q3 of 2023/24
• Smoking Cessation Service – Q4 of 2023/24

The NHSBSA have also engaged with IT supplier market on the development of an API to support the Discharge Medicines Service. As this is an Essential service that pharmacy owners must provide, they have undertaken additional engagement with the wider IT system supplier market and they will confirm timescales for the implementation in due course.

Further information 

Hypertension case-finding service

Pharmacy services IT and API requirements

Choosing IT suppliers