Page 14 - P4403.59-V46_Numark Magazine December 23 PRINT FINAL

DISPENSING

COMPENSATION

MECHANISM

COUNTRY SPECIFIC Members in Wales could be missing out on as

much as £30-40k per month.
CONTRACTS - JJ Back in January 2022, the Welsh government published
a response to the Dispensing Volume Review. They
announced that from April 2022, GP contractors were
asked to move all suitable patients from 28 days to 56
days prescribing.

The reason for the change:

To save patients from making multiple trips to
pharmacies, to save GPs having to write more
prescriptions, and pharmacies having to dispense more
prescriptions than all other countries in the UK. This
will alleviate some pressure for both pharmacies and
GP Practices. In addition, it will support pharmacies
by saving time through a reduction in dispensing and
allow pharmacists to invest that time in delivering
clinical services like the Common Ailments Service,
ALES
Emergency Contraception, and independent prescriber
services, allowing GPs to shift some workload to
community pharmacies. The evidence that using 28
days prescribing will help reduce waste is very limited.

How successful was the roll out?
The changes to prescribing frequency would not
happen simultaneously across all surgeries, as it
was predicted that capacity and variable workflows
would impact the roll out. With an expectation that
the changes would take anywhere between 2 and 12
months.
The reality was that the uptake was slower than
predicted and last year, item volume increased by
1.59%. This year, although uptake has started to
increase in some health boards, the average quantity
per item remains below 30% and has moved less than
half a % in the last 12 months.

The uptake in individual GP surgeries varies
W has seen their item numbers and fees drop significantly.
dramatically and members serviced by practices that
have implemented the prescribing frequency changes

How does the compensation scheme work?

To ensure individual contractors where not left out of
pocket, a dispensing compensation mechanism was
introduced in 2022.

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