Pharmacy: Community Health Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of community pharmacies have dispensed medications at a loss in each of the last three years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock
We do not hold this information. Community pharmacy reimbursement arrangements do not aim to ensure that every pharmacy is paid as much or more than it paid for every product, but aims overall to reimburse as much as they were bought for, plus the allowed medicine margin. The medicine margin is the difference between the product price reimbursed by the National Health Service and the price at which pharmacies buy them. As part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) in 2023/24, pharmacies were allowed to retain £850 million from the medicine margin, on top of what they are paid for the medicines they purchase as part of providing NHS services. The Department assesses the medicines margin retained through a quarterly margin survey, which has found that more than the amount agreed as part of the CPCF has been delivered in total across the previous four financial years.
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