Maximise NMS income with Pharmacy Intelligence Hub

Delivering transformational insights – let us help you understand how to make more money from NMS and save time. We’ve worked with our customers to help them deliver 65% increase in NMS performance, we’ve even seen one pharmacy triple their NMS income, that's  almost  £300k  increase.

We want to help pharmacies focus on the opportunity that managing clinical services presents, so they can thrive as a profitable business. We are dedicated to designing solutions that not only work seamlessly to embed services within pharmacy processes but also free up time to deliver as many services as possible.

The New Medicine Service is a critical clinical service, key to medicine compliance and patient safety. While the NMS service represents a great source of income if managed efficiently, pharmacies often express the challenge of maximising revenue due to the complex NHS payment framework for NMS.

Pharmacies that have not yet adopted a digital solution often rely on a paper-based process to provide this service. However, this approach is slow, labour-intensive, and comes with costly GDPR implications and risks such as the expenses of paper storage and shredding. As a result, many pharmacies find it impractical to deliver this service in significant volumes, particularly considering the ongoing demands of core dispensing activities and other patient services.

NMS was the fourth Advanced Service to be added to the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF), commencing on 1st October 2011. With the exception of Flu Vaccine during the season, NMS is the highest volume NHS clinical service with 8,956 pharmacies registered to deliver the service to patients and more than 200,000 completed every month. 

Unlike other NHS services, NMS has a distinct payment framework where the value of each service ranges from £20 to £28, depending on the volume delivered. The NHS pays per service on a sliding scale, up to 1% of the total items claimed in a month. However, any NMS services delivered above this threshold are not compensated. To attain the maximum payment of £28 per service, pharmacies need to reach the target of 40% of the 1% claimed items (equivalent to 100%).

The challenge becomes evident when pharmacies realise that they can determine the precise volume of NMS services required to reach the crucial 40% target for maximum payment only at the end of the month. Unfortunately, this realisation often occurs after the opportunity to capitalise on the revenue has already passed. That’s where we realised customers needed our help! 

Pharmacy Services in Pharmacy Manager

The good news is that NMS is available in Pharmacy Services. We have been working closely with Pharmacies and we know this is delivering substantial time savings - with users reporting that engagement time for an NMS has dropped to under one minute. Patient experience is therefore improved as a result of simplified service delivery and overall admin effort is reduced to the absolute minimum. 

We’re delighted to see these process improvements are tackling the impact of service delivery in-pharmacy and also supporting those pharmacies who opt to deliver NMS centrally. We’re continually refining our approach to the service workflow and look forward to adding the integration to the MYS API for automated claiming as soon as this is made available by NHS England. With the addition of antidepressants to NMS due later this year offering even more potential for NMS activity, now is the time to remove time-consuming processes. 

Bringing you visibility of your NMS target – when you need it.

The primary goal for most pharmacies is to achieve the 40% NMS target, yet the industry average currently stands at approximately 27%*. This indicates that a significant opportunity is being missed. Setting aside the workload of pharmacies, there is potential to deliver and receive payment for more NMS services. However, it is crucial to recognize that pharmacies are essentially facing financial penalties for each NMS service until they reach the 40% volume. Our objective is to eliminate this issue and ensure that your pharmacy receives full payment for all completed services. It's important to note that average calculations are not particularly useful for NMS management, as our analysis of various pharmacy groups has revealed substantial variations in performance across branches, ranging from under 10% to over 100%.

We’ve worked hard to recommend measures that can be immediately implemented following these reviews. Our suggestions encompass various strategies, such as proactively delivering a few additional NMS in under-performing sites to elevate them into a higher payment bracket. Additionally, we emphasise the importance of effectively reallocating resources in branches that have exceeded the 100% target, ensuring that they are directed towards paid activities. This can be achieved either within the pharmacy itself or by providing support to other sites, optimising the overall performance and revenue generation.

Despite the challenges mentioned, here's where the second piece of good news comes into play: we can provide you with real-time visibility of your NMS activity. This includes comprehensive information ranging from the number of eligible patients and their performance across multiple episodes to the volume of services completed and claimed. As these activities occur within the pharmacy, they are instantly accessible to your management users through the Pharmacy Intelligence Hub. This valuable tool enables you to effectively manage your performance in relation to the NHS target tariff and ultimately increase your income.

But that's not all. We're taking it a step further by harnessing the power of machine learning. Our advanced technology will predict the number of items your pharmacy is expected to claim this month, allowing you to monitor your performance in real-time. Stay tuned for more details on this exciting development.

*(NHS BSA Pharmacy & Appliance Contractor Dispensing Data Jan 2022-Dec 2022)

NMS - What you need to know

Community pharmacy contractors earn between £20 and £28 for each completed NMS they provide depending on the volume of NMS completed and the number of prescription items claimed in that month. 

The targets are a % of contractors’ eligible monthly item volume (total of prescription items dispensed)

There are a number of target payment levels;
•    Under 10% target is paid at £20 per service
•    10%+ target is paid at £25 per service
•    20%+ target is paid at £26 per service
•    30%+ target is paid at £27 per service
•    40%+ target is paid at the maximum £28 per service

*Source https://cpe.org.uk/national-pharmacy-services/advanced-services/nms/

Importantly: Payment is limited to 1% of the contractors’ eligible monthly item volume; contractors can provide NMS above this limit but will not be paid for them.

For example, where a pharmacy with a monthly prescription volume between 3501 to 4500 provides 10 service interventions in the month (achieving the 20 per cent target rate) all 10 interventions will be reimbursed at the 20 per cent rate of £26 each. 

Crunching the numbers for you

Using our innovative NMS Calculator, we will analyse your current tariff performance based on historical NHS data. This analysis will provide valuable performance insights that can help guide your decision-making process. More importantly, we will offer actionable recommendations and highlight areas of focus that have the potential to significantly enhance your NMS revenue. Our aim is to empower you with the necessary tools and strategies to make a substantial impact in this area.

Let’s look at an example

This is the performance distribution of a large group whose average tariff performance during 2022 was 25%:

Potential - moving to a higher target tariff

The potential impact on NMS revenue is remarkable. If we just focused on the stores that were performing below 30%, and improved their performance to reach the 30% threshold, the group's NMS revenue would increase by 65%. However, the potential for growth is even more significant if all stores can achieve the 40% target through improved NMS processes and a greater focus on patient recruitment. In this scenario, the group's NMS income would more than double, resulting in a substantial boost to overall revenue. This highlights the substantial financial benefits that can be achieved by maximising the performance and effectiveness of NMS across all stores.

Reducing losses - the impact of breaching the NHS 100% target

In 2022, the group experienced a significant volume of unpaid activity, which accounted for approximately 3% of their total NMS revenue. Given the considerable effort required to successfully complete this service amidst the competing priorities of a busy pharmacy, it is crucial to identify instances of over-performance and redirect resources accordingly. While using manual paper processes last year, the group estimated spending around 8 working days (8:30 am - 6 pm) delivering unclaimable NMS.

The upcoming launch of real-time reporting in the Pharmacy Intelligence Hub will provide clear visibility of sites that are approaching their 100% limit, enabling efficient resource allocation. By centralising the delivery of NMS, time saved can be redirected towards supporting sites that are still working towards the 40% target. With real-time performance visibility across all sites within the group, the revenue potential of the service can be maximised.

We have witnessed the effectiveness of this approach in practice. Within just six weeks of implementing both Pharmacy Services and the Pharmacy Intelligence Hub, one group achieved a remarkable 65% year-over-year increase in NMS income. The impact on an independent site, one of our early adopters, was even more substantial, with their NMS income more than tripling.

Karanjeet Ubhi, Owner, Michaels Chemist told us:

“Prior to using Pharmacy Services, we were using the NMS form template from the PSNC website. We kept track of everything manually with a folder full of paper and post-it notes with dates on. Keeping track of the patients due and when to call was really quite difficult. Relying on paper meant it was difficult to keep services moving and opportunities and appointments could easily slip our mind because the team in the store are focussed on managing everyday tasks in the pharmacy. At any point in the month we really had no idea how we were doing so trying to motivate staff towards a target was hard.

Performing the service itself was quite time consuming, just getting the patient set-up (on paper) took 10 minutes, now with Pharmacy Services it takes us less than a minute! There is simply no comparison to our old ways of working, Pharmacy Services combined with the Intelligence Hub has completely changed our approach. We are using the systems together to make sure we never miss an opportunity to claim for a service and nothing can slip through the net, because it’s all right there in the system.

It’s great to see how we are progressing towards our target, the transparency of where we are mid-month gives us the motivation to get more patients signed up and ultimately to get more done. Our service numbers are up as a result, we know that NMS revenue has more than tripled since introducing Pharmacy Services and Pharmacy Intelligence Hub in our clinical services processes. (Q1 2022 vs. Q1 2023)”

We understand that NMS presents more than just a revenue opportunity. We actively engage with pharmacies of all sizes to understand their unique challenges and empathise with our users, ensuring that our solutions align with their specific needs. Through this process of discovery, we have gathered numerous examples from pharmacists who have successfully identified situations that require urgent review by a GP instead of initiating potentially harmful medication. We have also received feedback on how valuable this service is in establishing strong patient relationships, which in turn helps cultivate a loyal patient base for the future. We are committed to assisting you in delivering more in these areas.

If you would like to discuss your pharmacy or a pharmacy business that you are considering purchasing, we encourage you to reach out to us. Together, we can explore ways to optimise your NMS revenue. Rest assured, we have access to up-to-date data for every pharmacy in England, enabling us to provide accurate and relevant insights for your specific needs.