Pharmacy Quality Scheme (PQS) | NHSBSA

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 2022-23 

If you’re participating in the PQS 2022-23, you will need to declare your performance against the quality domains on a day of your choosing during the declaration window.

Pharmacy contractors should read the Drug Tariff Part VIIA for full details of the gateway criteria and requirements of the domains included in the PQS 2022-23. Read about the Drug Tariff determination on our website.

The total funding for PQS 2022-23 is £75 million. The funding will be divided between qualifying pharmacies based on the number of points they have achieved. Each point will be worth between £67.50 and £135. 

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 criteria, you would not be eligible for the PQS 2022-23. 

Aspiration payment declaration 

As with the previous year’s scheme, an aspiration payment declaration is planned for PQS 2022-23 whereby you can declare and indicate which domains you intend to achieve.  

The aspiration payment must be claimed between 9am on 10 October 2022 and 11:59pm on 4 November 2022 through our MYS portal.   

The aspiration payment is optional and not claiming it will not impact on your ability to claim payment for the PQS 2022-23.   

The aspiration payment for each domain is paid on the understanding that you will have made a declaration before 11:59pm on 3 March 2023, stating you will meet the conditions of the relevant domains by 31 March 2023. If you do not achieve the full amount 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 2022-23.   

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 £67.50, the minimum value of a point for the PQS 2022-23.   

Aspiration payments will be paid, to pharmacies that claim, on 1 December 2022.

Pharmacy bandings 

For the PQS 2022-23, the maximum number of points for each domain will be dependent on a banding system. This is based on your total prescription item volume for which a fee is paid between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022 and taken from the NHSBSA’s payment data. This better reflects the workload of meeting the PQS 2022-23 requirements for different contractors.

Pharmacy bandings (Excel: 185KB)
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.  

As with the previous year’s scheme, PQS payments will only be made to those who have claimed payment for 20 completed NMS interventions between, and including, 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023. These must have been claimed via our MYS portal by 5 April 2023.

Any claims for NMS received after 5 April 2023 will not be considered for the PQS gateway.

Number of NMS consultations provided in prescription processing month (Excel: 1.2MB)

Declaration questions

When making your pharmacy’s PQS declaration, you will first be asked to answer questions to determine if you have passed the gateway criteria, if so you will then be asked to answer questions relating to each of the quality domains.

PQS questions (Word: 69KB)

Antimicrobial Stewardship Review

The review must be completed by the end of 31 March 2023 and must be carried out over four weeks with a minimum of 15 patients for each leaflet (UTI and RTI), or up to eight weeks if the minimum number of patients are not achieved within four weeks for each leaflet.

The data from the leaflets must be submitted via the MYS portal by the end of 31 March 2023. The contractor must enter the start and finish dates of the data collection period on the MYS portal at the point of declaration (which may be different from the date data is first entered on the MYS portal). No patient identifiable data should be entered into the MYS portal.

Antimicrobial Stewardship audit file (Excel: 636KB)

Weight Management Referrals

Pharmacies are expected to support those who wish to lose weight through advice and referral to the nationally available NHS Digital Weight Management Programme or Local Authority funded tier 2 weight management services (where these are locally available and where the individual meets the criteria for referral), based on eligibility and patient preference.

Contractors must have completed the above quality criterion for the Healthy Living Support domain if they intend to claim payment for the additional 10 points provided by completion of the referrals.

Referrals to either the NHS Digital Weight Management Programme or Local Authority funded tier 2 weight management services must be completed by 31 March 2023.

Weight Management Referrals data file (Excel: 593KB)

Declaration data

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 to us by email at [email protected].