The pharmacy day | A question to investigate
Starting a medicine and continuing the conversation
The New Medicine Service asks a pharmacy to provide more than a single encounter. People may have questions after leaving, schedules change and the team has to make follow-up work alongside dispensing and other services. The business challenge is to support a dependable series of contacts without turning the process into repeated chasing. The right evaluation therefore examines continuity and effort together, rather than celebrating enrolment while ignoring what happens afterwards.
In the conversation.
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Define the eligible pathway before estimating demand
NHS England describes NMS as structured support for people newly prescribed medicines for eligible conditions, usually through three conversations over the first several weeks (NHS England, n.d.). Eligibility, consent and professional competence belong within the service's current requirements. An operational review should not turn every new prescription into an assumed opportunity. Use the applicable service documents to establish the starting cohort, then keep clinical decisions with the pharmacist responsible for the service.
Separate invitation, agreement and follow-up
Record the stages the pharmacy can observe: a suitable invitation, agreement to participate, the planned contact and the recorded outcome. Distinguish people declining the service from those who want it but cannot use the offered arrangement. A missed contact may reflect timing, communication preferences or changing circumstances. Understanding those differences helps a pharmacy choose a practical improvement without treating the person as a lost sale or a colleague as the cause of non-completion.
Test the contact arrangement, not the treatment
A proposed first evaluation could compare ordinary scheduling with a clearer agreed contact window for a defined NMS cohort. Inputs would include aggregate enrolment and contact outcomes, approximate staff time, rescheduling and the team's account of what worked. Keep the observation burden small. The intervention would concern the operational arrangement around the service; it would not alter clinical advice, determine medicine changes or claim to establish adherence and health outcomes.
See the effort behind a completed contact
Compare completed follow-up contacts with total contact attempts and approximate team time. Retain separate categories for a person declining, asking to reschedule or being unreachable through the agreed route. These categories point towards different responses. A useful operational measure is staff time per completed appropriate follow-up, accompanied by the number and experience of people not reached. Neither the ratio nor the completion count should be presented as evidence of adherence.
The next conversation needs a plan.
Enrolment is one event. Follow-up depends on timing, communication and a team that knows who owns the next contact.
A pharmacy wants NMS follow-up to work with the contact windows people can actually use. Staff currently spend time on repeated attempts, and the owner needs to understand whether a small scheduling change would improve continuity.
Shows the effort behind completion while preserving a person’s choice and keeping clinical outcomes separate from operational convenience.
What would we need to understand?
- People or episodes included in the agreed scope
- Planned and completed contacts or handovers
- Attempts, rescheduling and communication route
- Staff effort and service availability
Constructed decision example | No customer results are shown.
Measure the cost of trying again
A completed follow-up may require several attempts. Include that effort, along with booking, preparation and record completion, when estimating delivery cost. Show the distribution of attempts rather than only an average that hides a difficult minority. Separately track what the existing claim process records and when income is received. A reduction in chasing might release usable capacity, but whether it creates additional contribution depends on what that capacity can realistically support in the pharmacy.
Choose a fair comparison
Compare similar eligible cohorts and note changes in staffing, service availability or the mix of people receiving support. A higher completion proportion in a quiet period cannot automatically be attributed to a new scheduling arrangement. If numbers are small, report the uncertainty plainly and use qualitative evidence to explain the mechanism. The result can still inform a local decision, provided the pharmacy does not mistake an encouraging observation for a generalisable clinical finding.
Support when a new medicine begins.
The original NHS explanation of support around a newly prescribed medicine. Read it alongside the current service, which has since expanded.
NHS England | Uploaded 10 July 2023
New Medicines Service
NHS England (2023) | 1 min 28 sec
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Medicines context photograph | Source
NHS England (2023) | Original film | Historical educational context
Current service guidance | New Medicine Service
Published by NHS England. Included as an external reference; no endorsement of NEUVIOR or PHARMORIS is implied.
Know the limits of the first result
Stop or redesign if the new process creates inappropriate pressure to participate, makes contact less accessible or adds more administration than the team can sustain. Confirm that the chosen measure does not encourage unsuitable completion coding. A good operational result may justify a longer evaluation or a carefully limited expansion. Claims about improved medicine use, quality of life or reduced NHS demand would require a different study and should not be inferred from scheduling data.
Build around the conversation people can actually have
Bring a follow-up pattern that is difficult today, such as repeated rescheduling or uncertainty about who owns the next contact. PHARMORIS is being developed to connect evidence with action, and a practical service problem can help shape a bounded use case. The first objective is clear: understand what makes the conversation happen reliably, what it costs the team and whether a specific operational change deserves to continue.
Sources and scope
NHS England | New Medicine Service | NHSBSA | MYS for pharmacies
NHS England (n.d.) New Medicine Service. Available at: https://www.england.nhs.uk/primary-care/pharmacy/pharmacy-services/nhs-new-medicine-service/ (Accessed: 14 October 2026).
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