Community pharmacies urged to engage with national assurance work

Pharmacies are being encouraged to fully engage with the upcoming Community Pharmacy Assurance Framework (CPAF) and provider assurance review.

NHS England has confirmed that the CPAF screening questionnaire will run throughout July, while the full questionnaire will run throughout October 2026 – the same timeline as the previous year.

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Completing the CPAF questionnaire is mandatory under NHS regulations introduced at the end of 2020.

Community Pharmacy England (CPE) said the questionnaire helps NHS England regional teams monitor pharmacy owners’ compliance with the terms of the community pharmacy contract.

Stage one consists of ten questions, which help NHS England to identify whether a pharmacy needs visiting. If a pharmacy is considered for a visit, the owner will then have to fill out a ‘full, comprehensive’ CPAF pre-visit questionnaire.

The screening questions and full questionnaire will be published on the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) website in due course so that pharmacy owners can consider their answers before submitting them in the online survey tool on the Manage Your Service (MYS) portal.

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The NHSBSA provider assurance team is also due to begin its post-payment verification (PPV) process with pharmacy owners providing smoking cessation services, pharmacy contraception services, Pharmacy First and the hypertension case-finding service.

It will write to a small cohort of pharmacies that have submitted ‘very high’ numbers of claims and request additional information or evidence to provide assurance that the consultations were made in accordance with the service specification.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) have a duty to assure themselves and NHS England of the quality and integrity of the activity provided under the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework and PPV is one way in which this monitoring is carried out.

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CPE – who were consulted on the verification process – said it would encourage any pharmacy owners who are selected to provide the requested evidence as part of the PPV process and to fully engage with the NHSBSA through the process.

Reviews of the smoking cessation service will engage with 31 pharmacies; reviews of the contraception service will engage with 27; reviews of Pharmacy First will engage with 19; and reviews of the hypertension case-finding service will engage with 147 pharmacies and 18 distance selling premises pharmacies.