The New Medicine Service (NMS) commenced on 1st October 2011. The service aims to support patients with long-term conditions who have been newly prescribed a medicine and aims to improve medicines adherence;

it is focused on specific patient groups and conditions. The list is subject to occasional amendment as more medicines and conditions are added, the current list of included conditions and medications can be found here. More information about the drugs that are included can be found here. 

NMS is potentially the most lucrative of all the various advanced services, each pharmacy has a target related to the number of Px items dispensed and payment is scaled so that the closer to target, the more the pharmacy earns up to a maximum of £28 per completed NMS making the service potentially worth up to £20,160 income in a typical pharmacy dispensing 6,000 items per month but to earn this the pharmacy will need to engage in around 180 patient conversations per month plus the frequent missed calls when the patient doesn’t answer. NMS is potentially worth up to £33,600 in a pharmacy dispensing 10,000 items per month but to earn this the pharmacy will need to engage in 300 patient conversations per month plus missed calls!

There are lots of reasons pharmacy staff fail to engage with NMS but most of the challenges centre on skill mix, time pressure and lack of long-term commitment by temporary employees.

There are three stages to each NMS instance:-

• Engagement – this takes place when the new medicine is handed over to the patient and can be effectively delivered by any colleagues involved in the handout. It is the colleagues responsibility to ensure the patient is eligible for the service.

• Intervention – is a conversation with the patient that takes place a week after Engagement.

• Follow Up – is a conversation that takes place two weeks after the Intervention.

The challenge with both Intervention and Follow-Up calls is that it can take several attempts to contact the patient. The service specification specifically permits NMS conversations with the patient to take place remotely from the pharmacy, which is where we come in. Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has produced a template document to record details of any conversation  that takes place which we use. Once the calls have taken place you will be sent a copy of the notes for your records to your NHS email, along with our invoice for £7 per completed stage. If the patient proves uncontactable at the Intervention stage there is no charge; whether or not the patient proves uncontactable at the Follow Up stage we will charge £7 because your pharmacy can claim a fee regardless.

For the duration of the conversation our pharmacist is acting on your behalf in a locum capacity. We will provide the information needed for you to log this with the outputs from the Intervention.

Our pharmacists carry their own  individual professional indemnity and are accredited to provide the NMS service.

Fees are charged for each successfully completed claimable stage.  This means you will only be charged by us when you can be paid for the service. If you would like to know more, just get in touch here!