A community pharmacy quality payments scheme (QPS), which forms part of the community pharmacy contractual framework (CPCF), was introduced in December 2016. The QPS was designed to reward community pharmacies for delivering quality criteria in all three of the quality dimensions: clinical effectiveness, patient safety and patient experience.

Details are also published in the drug tariff on the Business Service Authority website.

NHS England resources:

• Findings and recommendations from the antimicrobial stewardship initiatives
• Oral anticoagulant safety audit 2021/22
• Preventing harm from valproate audit report 2019-20
• High risk medicines audit report – Lithium, methotrexate, amiodarone and phenobarbital 2019-20
• NSAID safety audit 2018-19
• Community pharmacy quality scheme 2022-23: findings and recommendations from the TARGET treating your infection leaflets initiatives

Further external resources:

• Assessing the impact of using a patient counselling prompt – the TARGET antibiotic checklist in England’s community pharmacies
• An evaluation of oral anticoagulant safety indicators by England’s community pharmacies (mdpi.com)
• The use of the TARGET antibiotic checklist to support antimicrobial stewardship in England’s community pharmacies (mdpi.com)
• The national implementation of a community pharmacy antimicrobial stewardship intervention (PAMSI) through the PQS 2020-22 (mdpi.com)
• Evaluation of the England community pharmacy quality scheme (2018–2019 and 2019–2020) in reducing harm from NSAIDs in older patients (BMJ.com)
• Antibiotics – Responding to urinary tract infection symptoms in England’s community pharmacies (mdpi.com)