PSNC advises on criteria for pharmacies to receive SCR rollout funding
February 29 2016
Community pharmacy contractors in England supporting the rollout of the electronic Summary Care Record will be paid an allowance of £200 from March 1. However, the funding will be subject to certain conditions being met, PSNC has advised.
Under the terms set out in the March 2016 Drug Tariff, “the £200 allowance will be triggered when the pharmacy contractor has submitted the SCR in Community Pharmacy Usage Agreement to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and accessed the SCR. The allowance will only be paid once, irrespective of any subsequent premises merger, sale or relocation. The allowance will be time-limited and cease on the 31 March 2017,” said PSNC.
In order to receive the allowance, pharmacy contractors are required to:
- have an N3 connection
- be compliant with the HSCIC Warranted Environment Specification (WES)
- have a standard operating procedure for SCR viewing
- be compliant with the Information Governance Toolkit
- ensure staff accessing the SCR have specific smartcard roles enabling access to the SCR
- nominate one individual per site to attend an HSCIC or HSCIC approved face to face implementation briefing
- ensure all staff accessing the SCR complete the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education (CPPE) online SCR training; and
- appoint a Privacy Officer, responsible for auditing and reviewing the SCR access.
PSNC said the SCR rollout “will be an important enabler for the more clinically focussed community pharmacy service that the profession wants to see develop. Additionally, in time it should help us to make the case for full read and write access to shared care records which will further enhance patient care and collaboration with other healthcare professionals, particularly those working in general practices.”
It has advised that the costs incurred by pharmacy contractors which rollout SCR access will vary. “The £200 payment to pharmacy contractors included in the March 2016 Drug Tariff represents a contribution to those costs. When the Secretary of State for Health provided funding to NHS England to enable SCR access in community pharmacies, he made this conditional on pharmacy contractors sharing the cost of rollout with the NHS.”
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society has developed a decision tool “to support professional judgement for use of SCRs.” It includes “a decision making matrix which covers governance requirements for accessing the SCR, and potential scenarios where there may be a professional clinical need to access the SCR.”
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