This is an announcement on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Community Pharmacy contractors can now submit claims for the additional costs due to Covid-19 incurred between 1 March 2020 and 31 March 2021 for the delivery of NHS pharmaceutical services.
Claims can be submitted for four categories of costs:
- additional staff costs due to Covid-19 (for backfilling staff or to deal with increased demand);
- additional costs incurred to make premises Covid-19 secure (excluding PPE, hand sanitiser and costs of up to £300 for adjusting premises to support social distancing already paid to contractors)
- additional IT and Communication costs to support remote working and virtual patient contacts; and
- closures up to 14 days for infection control purposes notified to NHSE&I.
All claims must be submitted to the NHSBSA between 5 July and 15 August 2021 by completing and returning the claim form that will be available from 5 July.
All claims will be reviewed. If requested, documentation to evidence the value of the claim must be made available to the NHSBSA within 5 working days.
Payments will be made on 1 October.
The uplift to the advance payments received between 1 April 2020 and 1 July 2020 will be recovered as part of the monthly reconciliation from 1 October 2021 to 1 March 2022 in six equal parts.
The Drug Tariff determination for the reimbursement of Covid-19 costs and recovery of the uplift to the advance payments received between 1 April 2020 and 1 July 2020 is available:
Drug Tariff Part VIA - Covid-19 claims and recovery (PDF: 142KB)
Pharmacy contractors should note that this is not reflected in the June and July 2021 Drug Tariff.