The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has published the first list of April price concessions.

Community Pharmacy England (CPE) highlighted that the announcement, which was made on Friday, ‘comes late in the month’ and follows imposed changes to the way that price concessions are calculated.

From this month, both category M prices and price concessions are ‘temporarily’ subject to a margin reduction formula, with the aim of recovering around £5.4m per month from the sector between April and June 2024.

This is based on an estimation that the sector profited £16.2m over the agreed medicines margin up to the end of September 2023.

‘Community Pharmacy England has strongly opposed this, and is continuing to warn government and the NHS that putting further pressure on pharmacies to dispense at a loss will have very serious consequences for the sector, patients and the wider primary care system,’ the negotiator said in a statement on its website.

It added that it was ‘firmly opposed to this approach, or any recovery of margin, given the very serious financial fragility of community pharmacies’.

‘We have serious concerns about the ongoing impact on pharmacy businesses and their patients,’ CPE added.

A total of 108 price concessions have been granted so far for April, compared to 141 in March.

The initial list of price concessions can be found on the CPE website.

And the negotiator noted that it had submitted price concession applications for ‘a number of other medicines affected by pricing issues this month’ and will issue further updates as soon as the DHSC has responded to those applications.