Community pharmacy owners have reminded not to provide any more Medicines Use Review (MURs) as the service has now been decommissioned.
Contractors were able to provide a total of 100 MURs in 2020-21 ahead of the service being scrapped.
Any pending claim for MURs must be submitted by April 5 in accordance with the usual Drug Tariff claims process.
In an update, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) has said contractors who have previously provided MURs will need to consider the following points as the service has now been decommissioned:
Practice leaflets will need to be updated to remove MURs from the list of services that the pharmacy provides; however, contractors are reminded that NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSE&I) will not take action against contractors who have not updated these during the period of the pandemic.
Promotional materials for MURs such as leaflets, posters, service ladders should be removed from public view to prevent any confusion about the availability of this service. If contractors have their own website, any information about MURs should also be removed.
Updating the NHS website
PSNC has requested that MURs are removed centrally from the NHS website so contractors do not have to individually remove MURs from their NHS website profiles. The pharmacy negotiator is still waiting for confirmation on if this will occur.
However, contractors must ensure that they verify and where necessary, update the information contained in their NHS website profile at least once of the each quarter of the financial year.
The new quarter has started today (April 1), therefore contractors could consider updating and verifying their profiles and therefore they need to remove MURs from their pharmacy profile as part of this process in the coming days to meet this requirement.
Copies of records of MURs should be kept for at least two years after the date on which the MUR took place; this still applies even though the service has now been decommissioned.
Quarterly reporting of MUR data has not been required during the pandemic therefore there is no need to report the final quarter of data to NHSE&I as the service has been decommissioned.
