Fax number: 0151 285 4815

e-mail:

5th June 2013

Dear Colleague

Re: Welcome to NHSEngland – Business Information Letter

As from 1st April 2013, the Primary Care Trusts across Merseyside ceased to exist. NHS England (Merseyside) is the organisation that will manage the community pharmacy contracts within Merseyside.

The pharmacy contracts team

Please use above address, fax number and e-mail address for all communications unless otherwise stated (for eg, controlled drugs, error reporting etc.)

Individual telephone numbers detailed below:

  • Alan Cummings, Contracts Manager, 0151 285 4802
  • Bertha Brown, Contracts Officer, 0151 285 4799
  • Jacqui Jasper, Contracts Officer, 0151 285 4804
  • Emma Knox, Commissioning Support Manager, 0151 296 7469

The purpose of this letter is to clarify contractors obligations in terms of information to be provided to NHS England on a routine basis and other information to assist your practice.

E-mail addresses

All future correspondence will go out to pharmacies via e-mail. Your local LPC have set up a buddy system to support those contractors who do not have access to e-mail.

A number of people have provided personal e-mail addresses (yahoo and hotmail amongst others) that are creating a problem, as they are being blocked via NHS England’s firewall. To overcome this, you may prefer to open a personal NHSMail account. Please contact us via e-mail if you would like to set up a personal NHSMail account and we will support you with the process.

MUR and NMS

Each pharmacy providing the medicine use review (MUR) service and the new medicine service (NMS) should be collecting the necessary data from pharmacy records for the MUR/NMS conducted in that quarter, in accordance with the Pharmaceutical Services (Advanced and Enhanced Services) (England) Directions 2011.

This should be available no later than 10 working days from the last day of that quarter. Please send any outstanding reports for the first quarter of 2013 in as soon as possible.

The format in which it is to be provided and that it is to be sent electronically is specified within the Directions and can be found at:

and

Reports should be sent via e-mail to the above address at the end of each quarter as follows:

  • 1 January to 31 March 2013–10 April 2013
  • 1 April to 30 June 2013–10 July 2013
  • 1 July to 30 September 2013–10 October 2013
  • 1 October to 31 December 2013–10 January 2014

MUR accreditation

NHS England appreciate that you have already submitted your MUR accreditation to PCTs, however, in order to ensure that NHS England has a complete Merseyside database, could I please ask you to re-send this information.

Individual pharmacists should either fax, post to Emma Knox or scan and e-mail a copy to the above e-mail address. This also ensures that you are accredited within the whole of Merseyside.

It would also be helpful if pharmacies would also submit a copy of PREM 1 forms.

Pharmacy Closures

It is a contractual obligation to notify NHS England if the pharmacy is unable to open contracted hours – both core and supplementary hours. Please ensure any closures are notified by fax or e-mailas soon as is reasonably possible.

Certificates of Conformity

All certificates of conformity should be sent to us by post at the above address

Information governance requires that all patient identifiable information is removed before sending certificates to NHS England.

Community Pharmacy Patient questionnaire (CPPQ)

All pharmacies are required to conduct an annual community pharmacy patient questionnaire (formerly referred to as the Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire) as part of the clinical governance requirements within essential services of the contractual framework. The clinical governance approved particulars whichare effective from 1 July 2012 require that the questionnaire is analyzed,and the results published.

The questionnaireallows patients to provide valuable feedback to community pharmacies on the services they provide. More information can be found at:

The questionnaire should be completed annually by the end of March and a summary sent to us by fax, post or e-mail.

Complaints

Each pharmacy contractor must prepare an annual report for each year, ending 31 March. The annual report must be available to any person on request and the pharmacy contractor must also send a copy of its annual report to NHS England as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of the year to which the report relates.

To assist pharmacies, PSNC has prepared a template summary of complaints, which can be used as an index of complaints as they are received and closed. All the information necessary to produce the annual report can then be collated from this summary at the end of each year.

Please send copies of these reports to us, preferably by e-mail.

NHS England Contact Centre (previously PALS)

From April 2013, a new service handling general enquires, complaints and FOI requests has become fully operational within England. The NHS England Contact Centre is the first point of contact for the general public, NHS personnel, MPs, journalists and colleagues within internal and external partnership organisations.

All access routes into the contact centre are detailed below:

Telephone: 0300 311 22 33

E-Mail:

NHS England, PO Box 16738h

REDDITCH, B97 9PT

The service and will operate Monday to Friday, 08.00 – 18.00, excluding Bank Holidays.

If you have any questions regarding any of the details contained in this letter please contact us.

Yours sincerely

Emma Knox

Commissioning Support Manager,

Pharmacy contracts Team,

NHS England (Merseyside)