Hub and Spoke Set for 2025: Needed Sooner Rather Than Later

It’s great to hear the Pharmacy Minister confirm the Government is working towards hub and spoke in 2025. However, it is concerning to hear Community Pharmacy England say that it will realistically be later this year before the model of dispensing is available for pharmacies in different legal entities. A new funding contract for community pharmacy has to be the absolute priority. But model one of hub and spoke legislation would be straightforward to implement and needs to be put in place sooner rather than later to level the playing field. Our Head of Marketing, Shelley Dyer, takes a closer look.

Government Commitments and Conflicting Updates Ove Hub &  Spoke

At the very end of 2024, Shadow Minister for Business and Trade, Harriet Baldwin asked the Health and Social Care Minister with responsibility for pharmacy the question on many people’s lips: “Whether he plans to bring forward hub and spoke dispensing for pharmacies in 2025”. His answer will be reassuring for many, with Mr Kinnock, MP, confirming that the “Government was working towards introducing legislation to enable hub and spoke between different legal entities in 2025”.

However, this positive news was somewhat short-lived when just a couple of weeks later Community Pharmacy England (CPE) published a briefing that said while the new hub and spoke legislation was pending, the introduction was delayed and was now likely in “late 2025”. That’s almost 12 months after community pharmacy had originally been told the legislation would be introduced. Equally, the same update from CPE pointed out that new legislation for supervision was still envisaged but no date for its introduction has been set.

There can be absolutely no doubt that the top priority for community pharmacy has to be a new funding contract. The five-year flat rate funding contract, which has left many pharmacies at breaking point, expired almost 12 months ago and negotiations to agree a new contract have not been prioritised by the Government. This Labour Government has been vocal about their desire to fix the NHS by moving care closer to home and community pharmacy will play a key role in that. Yet their actions don’t currently match their words. There is still no contract to renumerate pharmacy fairly and the tools that could help community pharmacy modernise and release capacity for patient services – such as hub and spoke and supervision – remain inaccessible to the majority of pharmacies.

The Funding Crisis in Community Pharmacy

Late last year, we travelled to Westminster to participate in a roundtable event to debate the urgent need for model one of hub and speak for Community Pharmacy. Our Chief Commercial Officer, Ashley Kilgas, joined pharmacy owners, representatives from pharmacy policy bodies, and Labour MP Sadik Al-Hassan to raise concerns about the delays in legislation. The event was moderated by Chemist + Druggist, who have now published a report summarising the debate.

During the debate Ashley pointed out how hub and spoke would enable multiple branches in the same group, who have different legal entities, to benefit from hub technology for their own business to allow maximum efficiency savings. Safraz Shafqat from Wellfield Healthcare went on to explain: “When we operate under 30 different companies, it’s a massive struggle to implement hub and spoke. Whereas pharmacy multiples are quite easily able to do so. It’s quite important for us to be on that level playing field to at least give us that option.” Safraz went on to say that his business would benefit hugely from model one of hub and spoke dispensing.

Levelling the Playing Field for Independent Pharmacies

The current hub and spoke legislation means only larger pharmacy organisations, with the same legal entity, can use hub pharmacies. The new legislation will allow smaller, independent community pharmacies to be able to use hub pharmacies too, opening up a range of options and finally levelling the competitive playing field. Until the new legislation is introduced these smaller pharmacies will continue to be “locked out” leaving them at a disadvantage.

The Road Ahead For Pharmacy 

Hub and spoke legislation provides an important option that will allow community pharmacies to support more centralised dispensing, outsource their dispensing, retain the client relationship, increase capacity and shift to delivering more clinical services. This legislation has already been developed, yet it continues to be delayed. Once the pharmacy funding contract is finalised, hub and spoke has to be the next priority.

To read the full summary of the roundtable discussion click here.

Panelists at the event included:

Sadik Al-Hassan, Member of Parliament

Thorrun Govind, Solicitor, Brabners, Former Chair of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society English Pharmacy

Gordon Hockey, Director, Legal, Community Pharmacy England

Richard Hough, Partner, Brabners

Ashley Kilgas, Chief Commercial Officer, Centred Solutions

Ashley Cohen, Owner, Pharm-Assist (Healthcare)

Dr Simon Opher, Member of Parliament

Paul Rees, Chief Executive Officer, NPA

Safraz Shafqat, Managing Director, Wellfield Healthcare

Peter Thnoia, Superintendent and Chief Product & Innovation Officer, PillTime

Daniel Lee, Founder and CEO, HubRx

The moderator was James Halliwell, Editor-in-Chief, C+D. The roundtable discussion took place at the Houses of Parliament on 4th December 2024.

Ready to Start Your Hub and Spoke Journey?

At Centred Solutions, we specialise in supporting pharmacies through the transition to a hub and spoke model. Whether you're exploring your options or ready to implement this innovative system, our team is here to guide you every step of the way.

Schedule a demo to learn more about how we can help your pharmacy thrive in the evolving healthcare landscape.