Current pharmacy funding contract ‘completely broken and beyond farcical’

Many community pharmacies are under severe financial strain due to chronic underfunding and a mismatch between medicine costs and reimbursement rates.

A report by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) revealed that NHS underpays pharmacies by up to £75 a pack for common medicines, resulting in losses of
thousands of pounds each month.

The NPA analysis found that, in many instances, NHS funding covers only one-fifth of their purchase costs for medicines.

Nemesh Patel, Managing Director of the Southdowns Pharmacy Group, said the current pharmacy funding contract is “completely broken and beyond farcical.”

Sharing their struggles, he tells Pharmacy Business: “Our teams are wasting hours and hours trying to just source medication for patients when they could be
better using that time to clinically support our patients, and then when it comes to reimbursement, the drug tariff prices or concessionary prices are
structured such that on hundreds of medications we dispense per month, we will be making a significant financial loss, each and every single time our
pharmacies dispense that medication.”