Charting New Waters with Data

Pharmacy in the UK is operating without a contract from the NHS, and it could be October before there is one in place for 2019/20. Items are static and payments are down. This is a very challenging environment to operate in. Planning for the future is difficult but arguably it has never been more important. There is potential light at the end of the tunnel with the Long Term Plan and other NHS initiatives.

The aim of this event was to bring a group of experienced speakers and get delegate input on these recent announcements to make sense of them and perhaps to inform planning.

Rob Darracott of P3pharmacy, opened the morning with a reflection on the NHS’s previous publications noting key objectives from the 2008 Whitepaper, the 2016 Five Year Forward View, and ”The Letter” of December 2015. Rob told us that in the past the NHS hasn’t followed through on some of their large initiatives, but that he believes this time the NHS is serious. He advocated to be part of the change rather than casualties of the change.

Aneet Kapoor, chair of Greater Manchester LPC shared his experience of the collaboration trials in the Greater Manchester area, and he cited some examples of wins for patients. The Primary Care Networks (PCN) proposed in the Long Term Plan will be similar to these. He challenged the widely held belief the locally commissioned services are too hard to do and are not commercially viable.

Craig Amer from the NHS Business Services Authority reminded the attendees that we have not moved to a service model yet and it is important to make sure you are paid correctly. He gave some examples of where Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) claims can go wrong. Fluctuations with FP34 payments could cause cashflow issues, so ensuring claim deadlines are met is crucial.

RWA CEO, Conall Lavery tied the content of the day together and showcased how pharmacy’s own data can be used to help you plan for change in the challenging environment. Perhaps it can be argued that the payments for private services when examined in isolation can be loss making. However, when examined from the patient perspective it can work. Services help you keep your existing patients and win new ones, this increases your items and a certain percentage of these will buy more OTC items from you.

He also gave a short case study to illustrate how collaboration can work for Community Pharmacy. A customer with 6 branches worked with his local GP’s to help them get their QOF payment whilst driving business to his branches.

Conall also alluded to how Real World Analytics help their customers predict their payments with its FP34 prediction module, calculate real margins each month, and show where groups have not been paid correctly by the NHS. This new functionality has never been done before in the industry and will go live early in Q3 2019.

If you missed out on this event, don’t worry because we will be announcing the date for our next event very soon! We will be bringing this event to London in Q4 2019. We already have a growing waitlist, so email us your name and company name to pharmacy@realworldanalytics.com and you will get an exclusive invitation to book your seat before anyone else.