Pharmacy owners must register to deliver the Pharmacy Contraception Service, Hypertension Case Finding Service and Pharmacy First before Sunday 1 June to ensure they are entitled to a monthly fixed payment.

From 1 June, the Pharmacy First ‘bundling requirements’ come into force, meaning pharmacies must be registered to deliver all three services – in addition to delivering the minimum number of clinical pathway Pharmacy First consultations – to receive the fixed payment.

Pharmacy owners will need to register on the Manage your Service (MYS) portal for all three services by 11.59pm on Saturday 31 May.

New interim payment threshold for Pharmacy First

While those who reach the target of 30 or more Pharmacy First clinical pathway consultations will get a £1,000 monthly payment, a new interim payment threshold will also be introduced from June 2025.

As part of the change, which was announced in the recent pharmacy contract, those who deliver 20-29 clinical pathway consultations in a month will receive a £500 interim payment.

To enable the variable payment, the claim window for these consultations will be reduced from three months to strictly one month from June.

This means, for example, for June 2025, claims must be made on MYS by the last day of July 2025.

Recent changes to allow an additional 12 months to claim payment, where an issue with IT systems prevented the submission of a claim, will remain.

Further bundling requirements to come

Further changes to the hypertension, contraception and Pharmacy First bundling requirements will also come into force later this year.

From October 2025, contractors will also be required to deliver one ambulatory blood pressure monitoring per month.

And from March 2026, a minimum number of contraception consultations – yet to be agreed with Community Pharmacy England (CPE) – will be introduced.