New medicine service (NMS)

The service provides support for people with long-term conditions newly prescribed a medicine to help improve medicines adherence; it is focused on specific patient groups and conditions.

The service provides support to people who are newly prescribed a medicine to manage a LTC, which will generally help them to appropriately improve their medication adherence and enhance self-management of the LTC. Specific conditions/medicines are covered by the service, which are detailed below.

The service is split into three stages, which are:

• patient engagement;

• intervention; and

• follow up.

Patient engagement – Following the prescribing of a new medicine for the management of a LTC, patients will be recruited to the service by prescriber referral (which could include referral for medicines prescribed to the patient as a hospital inpatient or outpatient) or opportunistically by the community pharmacy staff.

The new medicine will be dispensed as usual, with the provision of advice about its use  and the patient will be offered the opportunity to use the NMS. Where there is acceptance of the offer, the pharmacy staff and patient will agree a method and time for the Intervention stage, typically between seven and 14 days after patient engagement.

Intervention – The pharmacist and patient will have a discussion either face-to-face in the pharmacy’s consultation room or alternatively via telephone or video consultation. The pharmacist will assess the patient’s adherence to the medicine(s), identify problems and determine the patient’s need for further information and support. The NMS intervention interview schedule will normally be used to guide this conversation.

The pharmacist will provide advice and further support and where no problems have been identified, will agree a time for the follow up stage, typically between 14 and 21 days after the intervention stage. This is similarly the case, where problems have been identified, but the pharmacist and patient have agreed actions which may address the issues, without the need to discuss these with the patient’s prescriber.

If problems are identified and it is the clinical judgement of the pharmacist that intervention by the patient’s prescriber is required, the issue will be referred to them to consider.

Follow up – The pharmacist and patient will again have a discussion either face-to-face in the pharmacy’s consultation room or alternatively via telephone or video consultation. The pharmacist will assess the patient’s adherence to the medicine(s), identify problems and determine the patient’s need for further information and support. The NMS follow up interview schedule will normally be used to guide this conversation. The pharmacist will provide advice and further support where necessary. If a problem is identified, the pharmacist and patients will either agree a solution or, where necessary, the patient will be referred to their prescriber to consider the matter.

All stages of the service provide an opportunity for healthy living advice to be provided, as appropriate to the individual.

Pharmacy owners claim payments by stating on their monthly FP34C submission, on the MYS portal, the number of completed NMS they have undertaken in a given month. Claims for payment must be submitted via the MYS portal by the 5th day of the month following the month in which the service was provided.

Changes to the NMS payment structure and fees in April 2025

As part of the contractual settlement for 2025/26 it was agreed that from 1st April 2025, the payment structure for NMS would be simplified to a £14 fee for each Intervention or Follow up consultation provided to the patient, i.e. a total fee of £28 will be paid if the pharmacy has undertaken both the Intervention and Follow up consultations.

This change to the funding structure does not change the existing service requirement to undertake the Intervention consultation and to try to contact the patient to undertake the Follow up consultation.

A £14 payment can only be claimed if a consultation has been undertaken with the patient.

If the patient cannot be contacted by the pharmacy to undertake a consultation, the fee for that consultation cannot be claimed.

For example, two £14 fees can be claimed in the end of month MYS claim once the Intervention consultation and Follow up consultation have been provided to the patient.

Similarly, one £14 fee can be claimed in the end of month MYS claim if the Intervention consultation has been provided and the pharmacy tries, but fails to contact the patient for the Follow up consultation (which does not take place and hence can’t be claimed for).

Resource: New Medicine Service – when are payments claimable?

When can I include an NMS provision in my claim?

The fee or fees for the provision of NMS consultations for an individual patient should be claimed once the overall service provision has been concluded for that individual.

If the provision of the service straddles two months, the claim for fees should be submitted in the MYS claim relating to the second month.

For example, an Intervention consultation is provided in May, but the Follow up doesn’t take place until June, so the fees for both consultations should be claimed in the MYS claim for June.

Making your end of month claim

There was no change to the timelines for making a claim for NMS: pharmacy owners must claim payments by stating within the MYS portal, the number of completed NMS they have undertaken in a given month, with claims for payment being submitted by the 5th day of the month following the month in which the service was provided.

Later in 2025, the NHSBSA will amend the MYS module which pharmacy owners use to claim for their provision of NMS to allow the number of Intervention consultations and Follow up consultations to be separately entered.

Until that change is made to MYS and starting with claims for NMS provided in April 2025, pharmacy owners need to claim the total number of Intervention consultations and Follow up consultations they have provided in the month. For example:

Number of completed Intervention consultations                                20

Number of completed Follow up consultations                                     11

Number of NMS provisions to be claimed in the MYS module             31

Once the NHSBSA have updated the MYS module, pharmacy owners will be able to separately report on the number of Intervention consultation and Follow up consultations, with the NHSBSA making payment based on the total number of each. We will alert pharmacy owners ahead of that change to MYS taking place.

Cap on payments for NMS

The number of NMS consultations that each pharmacy will be paid for is subject to an overall cap of 1% of their monthly prescriptions, set out in the table below (taken from the April 2025 Drug Tariff). The numbers in the previous version of the table (within the Drug Tariff) have been doubled to allow both types of consultations to be claimed using the current MYS functionality as an interim measure.

 More Information available on CPE website here 

Supporting documents and information can be found on CPE website here and on NHSBSA here.

Service specification can be downloaded here.

Expanded NMS drug list can be downloaded here.

Expanded NMS BNF categories can be download here.