About the scheme
The Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS) forms part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF). PQS is designed to support delivery of the NHS Long Term Plan and reward community pharmacies that deliver quality criteria in three quality dimensions:
- clinical effectiveness
- patient safety
- patient experience
PQS 2023-24
If you’re participating in the PQS 2023-24, you will need to declare your performance against the quality domains on a day of your choosing during the declaration window.
The total funding for PQS 2023-24 is £45 million, with a reduced list of activities for contractors. The remainder of the PQS funding (£30 million) will be used as an alternative to reducing fees to help ensure that there is no over-delivery of fees in the financial year. The funding will be divided between qualifying pharmacies based on the number of points they have achieved. Each point will be worth between £68.75 and £137.50.
Payments will be made to all eligible contractors depending on the band you are placed in and how many domains you have declared you are meeting.
If you fail to meet the gateway criterion, you will not be eligible for the PQS 2023-24.
Declaration questions
You can make your pharmacy’s PQS declaration at any time during the declaration window, between 9am on 5 February 2024 and 11:59pm on 1 March 2024.
Aspiration payment declaration
As with the previous year’s scheme, an aspiration payment declaration is planned for PQS 2023-24 whereby you can declare and indicate which domains you intend to achieve.
The aspiration payment must be claimed between 9am on 4 September 2023 to 11:59pm on 29 September 2023 through our MYS application.
The aspiration payment is optional and not claiming it will not impact on your ability to claim payment for the PQS 2023-24.
The aspiration payment for each domain is paid on the understanding that you will have made a declaration within the declaration period and that you will have completed the PQS 2023-24 before 11:59pm on 31 March 2024, stating you will meet the conditions of the relevant domains. If you do not achieve the full number of points you have claimed for, payment issued for the remainder will be reclaimed.
There is no requirement to have claimed for a previous PQS to claim an aspiration payment for PQS 2023-24.
The maximum number of points you can receive an aspiration payment for is 70% of the number of points within your band.
The value of the point for the aspiration payment is set at £68.75, the minimum value of a point for the PQS 2023-24.
Aspiration payments will be paid to pharmacies that claim on 1 November 2023.
Pharmacy Bandings
For the PQS 2023-24, the maximum number of points for the Medicines Safety and Optimisation domain and the Prevention domain, will be fixed irrespective of the participating contractor’s total prescription item volume for bands 2-6. There are different points allocated for contractors in band 1.
For the Respiratory domain, the maximum number of points will be on a banding system. This is based on your total prescription item volume for which a fee is paid between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023 and taken from the NHSBSA’s payment data.
This better reflects the workload of meeting the PQS 2023-24 requirements for different contractors.
New Medicine Service (NMS) gateway criterion
The aim of this gateway criterion is to ensure that all pharmacies taking part in the scheme meet all the terms of service requirements and are choosing to actively provide clinical support to patients by providing the NMS.
PQS payments will only be made to those contractors who have claimed payment for 15 completed NMS interventions between, and including, 1 April 2023 to 31 December 2023. These must then have been claimed via our MYS application by 5 January 2024.
Any claims for NMS received after 5 January 2024 will not be considered for the PQS gateway criterion.
Antimicrobial Stewardship criteria
Antimicrobial Stewardship Reviews using the TARGET Toolkit
TARGET antibiotic checklist
The review must be completed by the end of 31 March 2024 and must be carried out over 4 weeks with a minimum of 25 patients or up to 8 weeks if the minimum number of patients is not achieved within 4 weeks.
The data from the checklists must be added to the MYS data collection tool by the end of 31 March 2024. No patient-identifiable data should be entered into the MYS portal.
Contractors should make a record of the start and end date of the review as they will be required to enter this information into the MYS application when they make their declaration.
TARGET Treating Your Infection leaflets for UTI and RTI
The review must be completed by the end of 31 March 2024 and must be carried out over 4 weeks with a minimum of 15 patients for each leaflet (UTI and RTI), or up to 8 weeks if the minimum number of patients is not achieved within 4 weeks for each leaflet.
The data from the leaflets must be added to the MYS data collection tool by the end of 31 March 2024. No patient-identifiable data should be entered into the MYS portal.
The contractor will be required to enter the start and finish dates of the data collection period into the MYS application when they make their declaration.
TARGET Treating Your Infection Leaflets Data Collection Form 2023-24 (Word:42KB)
Declaration data
February 2024 declaration data (CSV: 1.1MB) February 2023 declaration data (CSV: 460KB)February 2022 declaration data (CSV: 534KB)February 2021 declaration data (CSV: 477KB)February 2020 declaration data (CSV: 533KB)February 2019 declaration data (CSV: 1.5MB)June 2018 declaration data (CSV: 2.4MB)November 2017 declaration data (CSV: 2.3MB)April 2017 declaration data (CSV: 2.2MB)
If you need to contact us
Send any questions relating to the Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS) to us by email at pharmacysupport@nhsbsa.nhs.uk