NHS England has released a further update on the success of the NHS Urgent Medicine Supply Advanced Service (NUMSAS) pilot, highlighting its positive impact on patients. It follows a previous update in October 2017.

The latest figures from the data collated by NHS England include:

• Over 3,600 pharmacies have registered to provide NUMSAS
• Over 29,100 items have been dispensed and supplied by pharmacies 
• The most frequently supplied medicine continued to be Ventolin Evohaler (salbutamol CFC-free inhaler 100mcg/dose) 
• A quarter of items requested were not supplied.

Over 1,900 patients using NUMSAS completed a patient questionnaire, with 93% stating they were “very satisfied” with the service. If the pharmacy had not made a supply:

• 41% would have contacted a GP out-of-hours service
• 24% of patients would have gone without medication
• 20% would have attended an urgent care centre (such as A&E)
• 4% would have contacted their GP.

NHS England has highlighted the following action points to be undertaken by pharmacy contractors to enable an appropriate evaluation of the NUMSAS service:

Completion of patient questionnaires

Pharmacy contractors are reminded to ask patients who are using NUMSAS to complete a patient questionnaire. The questionnaire can be completed either electronically or on paper by the patient.

• Electronically - pharmacy contractors can log on to the NHS England NUMSAS IT platform, which allow patients to complete the questionnaire online
• Paper - Annex D of the NUMSAS service specification contains the patient questionnaire template for pharmacy contractors to print out and patients to complete (however the completed paper forms should be transcribed and submitted via the NHS England IT platform)

Completion of the FP10DT Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) token
Pharmacy contractors should ensure that the FP10DT EPS token is annotated fully when a supply is not made to the patient. The token should be annotated with the name of any medicines requested which were not supplied to the patient

The NUMSAS pilot has been extended until the end of September 2018.

NHS England has confirmed the NHS Urgent Medicine Supply Advanced Service (NUMSAS) pilot has been extended for an additional six months from the end of March 2018 and will now run until the end of September 2018.

The NUMSAS pilot has been extended to allow for a thorough evaluation of the service to be undertaken, to determine future commissioning. Pharmacy contractors are encouraged to provide feedback on the NUMSAS pilot via their local community pharmacy integration lead or email to england.pharmacyintegration@nhs.net.

Information on how pharmacy contractors can become involved in the NUMSAS service can be found in the NHS England NUMSAS Toolkit. The NPA has produced a NUMSAS standard operating procedure (SOP) available on the NPA website, to support members providing the service.

Please contact the NPA on 01727 891 800 or email pharmacyservices@npa.co.uk for more information.