Following the news that hub and spoke dispensing will now no longer be implemented from 1 January 2025, CCA Chief Executive Malcolm Harrison said:
“It’s disappointing that commitments made to support pharmacies in the 2019 contractual framework agreement are the subject of further delays.
As part of the 2019 five-year deal, community pharmacy has had to make substantial efficiency savings. In exchange, the Department for Health and NHS England committed to enable more efficient operating models with changes to supervision and hub and spoke laws.
It is also still the case that if pharmacies are to be able to benefit from hub and spoke arrangements, new clinical services must be commissioned. The costs of establishing and maintaining hub operations are significant, and with little to no profit available in dispensing NHS medicines, it is hard to see how new facilities could be established, or pharmacies could afford to procure assembly services from them.
Ultimately, policymakers must realise that community pharmacy needs a ‘new deal’ – one that involves an increase in core funding and investment in new clinical services, such as Pharmacy First”.