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Data Feeds

Rows of data on a computer screen, like a spreadsheet or database

Every buying decision a pharmacy makes rests on NHS data that is published, and then keeps changing: what a pack is, what the NHS will pay for it this month, and what happens to that payment when supply runs short.

VeriPath Pharmacy keeps all of it current as a routine — refreshed weekly, never by hand, and never quietly out of date.

Data-flow diagram: three published NHS sources — NHSBSA dm+d distributed by TRUD (weekly), the NHS Drug Tariff (monthly) and price concessions from Community Pharmacy England (re-issued several times a month) — are fetched on our own schedule, recorded with their publication date, matched line by line to the dm+d pack, priced against the month's concession price or the pack's tariff price, and reduced by the category discount rate unless a concession or Part II item waives it. The result is one reimbursement figure per pack, with the rule that produced it, on the business manager's ordering view.

The data moves. A stale list fails in silence.

dm+d is republished weekly — packs added, renamed and discontinued. The Drug Tariff moves monthly. Price concessions land at days' notice. Software still pricing against a list from the year it was installed carries on, confidently, until the mistake surfaces as a margin that will not reconcile.

The right pack, every time

Every stock item is linked to its dm+d pack, so the item the pharmacy buys is the item the dispensary dispenses and the item the reimbursement is calculated on — not a free-text description somebody typed once. One vocabulary, shared with the whole of NHS primary care, matched and recorded rather than guessed.

What the NHS pays, and why

The ordering view shows each item's NHS reimbursement beside what it costs to buy, with the rule that produced it: the deduction applied, an exemption, the concession in force for the month. When a payment has to be queried, the reasoning is already on the screen.

Product information, on your own screen

Any member of staff can search the published NHS data by name and see the pack, its identifier, and its published price with the basis — dm+d's own wording, such as priced when manufactured — beside the previous price. Where there is no published price, the screen says so, rather than showing a misleading £0.00.

Always current — and it says so

Every feed is tracked by its live release, publication date, age and next expected refresh. An overdue feed raises an alert rather than sitting silent, so the platform can tell current from not checked since Tuesday.

Nothing to maintain, and nothing of yours held centrally

The feeds refresh automatically on our own schedule: nobody downloads a file, and nobody has to remember to. The NHS's published reference data is the only thing held centrally — and only because it contains nothing of yours. Everything that belongs to the pharmacy stays on the pharmacy's own server.

What this means for the pharmacy

  • Priced on today's numbers. Weekly dm+d, monthly Drug Tariff, concessions as they land.
  • Figures you can defend. Every reimbursement carries the rule that produced it.
  • One identity, end to end. The pack bought, dispensed and reimbursed is the same pack.
  • Nothing to chase. No downloads, no annual update project, no stale list.

Part of the VeriPath Pharmacy set

Data feeds close the Stock capability area — see the Pharmacy App web content overview for the full set.

  • Stock — where the pack links and the ledger live.
  • Ordering — where the reimbursement figure is set against a wholesaler's price.
  • Supplier portals — how a wholesaler's own price file reaches the app.