Economic Analysis of Community Pharmacy for NHS England

Background

NHS England’s vision is for the community pharmacy sector to play an increased role in the delivery of integrated primary care services to support access challenges in primary care. It is expected this will help to release capacity in the wider NHS to address more acute and complex health conditions.

As part of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework 2022-2024 NHS England commissioned an independent economic analysis, carried out by Frontier Economics and Iqvia. This analysis will inform future decisions on sustainable funding for the sector and help release capacity in primary care, and across the wider NHS and maintain the long-term benefit from community pharmacy to the NHS. The final report is published as the Economic analysis of the pharmacy sector | Frontier Economics.

 Action

NHS Midlands and Lancashire (NHS ML) supported the project by providing programme management with a secretariat function to oversee and manage the economic analysis project. This was delivered through the NHS ML specialist pharmacy team providing advisory support for all stakeholders, managing the project delivery, risks and governance and providing the chair and secretariat role across the programme. We established:

• A Working Group with representation from a wide range of organisations across the Community Pharmacy sector, NHS England, Department of Health and Community Pharmacy England, Frontier Economics and Iqvia
• An Advisory Board with representatives from Community Pharmacy England, NHS England and Department of Health and Social care, Frontier Economics and Iqvia
• A Contract management monthly meeting to ensure the providers Frontier Economics and Iqvia delivered the required outcomes on time.

Impact

NHS Midland and Lancashire developed a project governance  approach to ensure an independent study was conducted by Frontier Economics and IQVIA.

The study provided a comprehensive understanding of the full economic costs and sustainability of Community Pharmacy in England. The final report was published in March 2025 and has informed strategic decisions to help shape the future of community pharmacy services.

There were many challenges to navigate throughout the project, mainly due to the complex analysis required and large number of stakeholders.

Our main role involved management of arising risks or issues whilst ensuring completion of mitigating actions agreed with the project team. This  approach enabled an independent overview with a collaborative alignment across all stakeholders. We established a flexible process to manage challenges as they arose, assuring protected space to allow good communications and a culture that everyone’s voice could be heard. This helped to build trust and provide confidence that a true independent approach was in place.  Our processes aimed to empower representatives so agreement could be reached to determine the required data fields needed for the analysis and ensure a successful outcome was achieved.

We provided secretariat support for all the project meetings, managing stakeholder engagement with ongoing reporting on progress against agreed deliverables. In total 16 Working Group meetings, 14 Advisory Board meetings, and 14 Contract Group Meetings were held.