Community Pharmacy Scotland has won a bronze award for supporting its members at the Association Excellence Awards 2024 earlier this month (November 8).

CPS were shortlisted in the Best Membership Support category as the awards “highlight best practice and excellence amongst industry bodies, professional membership organisations, and trade unions in the UK and Europe”.

The Scottish pharmacy negotiator has been involved in various initiatives to support members, most notably with its engagement over the new prescription payment system by National Service Scotland (NSS) in July 2023 which secured “nearly £10 million in accurate reimbursements that may have been overlooked without CPS intervention”.

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The awards' judges noted this intervention and added that CPS had “an impressive volume of activities [and] mechanisms to engage with members”.

CPS policy and public relations pharmacist Sarah Scott said the CPS was “delighted to have been shortlisted and to have placed third in a category with such incredible support organisations up for the same award”.

“Our members and their teams work tirelessly to support their communities to live in better health, and we are proud that our work supports them to be able to do this,” she added.

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In a blog about their shortlisting, CPS says “since the pandemic released its grip on the community pharmacy network, our members have faced significant operational challenges while continuing to deliver world-leading services to our communities”.

“Through these initiatives we have ensured that critical support has been provided to our members through times of enormous stress and rapid changes in practice,” it said.

On the NSS’s new prescription payment system, CPS says its intervention to “ensure they are paid accurately and promptly for the services they provide to their communities” had led to members having an “improved oversight of their income, helping them remain viable during an extremely challenging financial period”.

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“This work will continue until we are able to fully audit not just services payments, but payments for all prescriptions too,” it added.

Looking ahead, CPS says “one of our key organisational goals is to establish a Community Pharmacist Independent Prescribing (IP) service in all community pharmacies across Scotland within the next decade”.

Its proposal “for an NHS Pharmacy First Plus Scotland Service has been agreed upon with the Scottish Government” and this will create “an attractive environment for pharmacists to apply their valuable skills, helping to recruit and retain talented individuals”.

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It added that its communication with members on their website has been “redesigned within the past year” for a more user-friendly experience, so members can access “information on NHS services, government circulars, consultations, and updated drug tariffs”.

In September, CPS announced it had “accepted a financial offer for 2024/25 from the Scottish government on behalf of Scotland’s 1,243 pharmacies” which provided a 6% uplift “on the global sum increasing by £13.2m to £232.67m”.

It added that the guaranteed minimum for reimbursement had been increased by £10m, up from £100m in 2023/24 to £110m in 2024/25.