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The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has challenged price concessions imposed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on some of the medicines. It has raised concerns on the process for setting price concessions to senior government officials responsible for medicines supply, warning that the system is not working in the current environment from a community pharmacy contractor perspective. "When a new government takes over next week, this will be one of several urgent topics being raised by PSNC to new ministers, alongside the fuel price crisis, inflationary pressures and winter pressures on pharmacy businesses," said PSNC. The final update to August price concessions was announced yesterday taking the total concessions granted to a record 138 for August. PSNC said: "Of those, 99 were in line with PSNC requests, but prices for 39 lines were imposed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC): those impositions do not match the purchase prices reported by contractors and the evidence of market prices which we passed on to DHSC. In particular, the final imposed prices of Apriprazole and Temazepam tablets has generated a lot of concern amongst contractors due to the large variation between their reimbursement prices and purchase prices during the month of August."

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC)'s members are seeking immediate rescue packages for the sector to help with energy bills and to ease capacity constraints. In a meeting held on 14th and 15th September, the committee members expressed their anger and frustration on the reluctance of NHS England and government to fund pharmacy sustainably. The meeting was held to consider practical steps to ease the pressures on the community pharmacy sector, and to oversee the progress of negotiations on the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) and other work. Committee members, as pharmacy contractors, shared their experiences of the current pressures on all contractors, including the inability to deliver some services and to maintain core service levels; the capacity and workforce crises facing the sector; the critical need for funding support this winter; and the urgent need for Government to adapt the Price Concessions system to meet the needs of contractors. "The Price Concessions system is no longer working for contractors in the current volatile medicine supply environment and PSNC is clear this is not acceptable," said the committee.

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has raised concerns over the impact that high medicine price rises are having on contractor. Recently, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has granted the final list of price concessions for December 2022. The latest additions bring the total number of concessionary prices granted for the month of December to 198, surpassing the previous record of 159 granted in September 2022. PSNC has heard from hundreds of community pharmacy contractors who are paying inflated prices for antibiotics used for the treatment of Strep A and who have rightly been concerned about the lack of certainty around the final reimbursement prices for these medicines. It added: "We welcomed the involvement of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to look into the pricing of antibiotics. But the number of reports we are getting from contractors about medicines price rises are just not acceptable and this goes far beyond the antibiotic crisis."