CPE publishes guidance to help pharmacy owners complete NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit

Pharmacy teams are encouraged to consider this annual requirement in their workload planning.  

Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has reminded community pharmacy owners that the deadline to complete the 2023/24 Data Security and Protection Toolkit to make their information governance (IG) declaration is 30 June 2024.

Sometimes referred to as the “NHS IG toolkit”, the DSPT is a set of security requirements that companies are required to fulfill to supply goods and services to the health service to ensure the safety and protection of sensitive patient information.

To help community pharmacy contractors complete the mandatory questions within the Toolkit, CPE on Monday (12 February) published new guidance, which also contains references to other useful materials.

CPE is working with the NHS DSPTK team to keep the workload associated with Toolkit completion manageable whilst ensuring that appropriate data security protections are maintained.

Pharmacy owners with three or more pharmacies can complete a single submission for all their premises through the NHS Parent Organisation Code (POC) headquarters (HQ) batch submission feature.

Those owning multiple pharmacies are recommended to check the list of pharmacies associated with their NHS POC code to ensure its accuracy so that any issues can be rectified promptly.

CPE added that additional guidance may soon be provided by PMR suppliers to help pharmacy teams with completing the updated technical questions in the 2024 Toolkit.

Pharmacy teams are encouraged to consider this annual requirement in their workload planning and fill in the Toolkit as soon as possible.