Specialist Coverage Award 2025 NPA Insurance

The Secret of Success: The Ongoing effort behind the NPA Insurance's receipt of the Specialist Coverage Award at the National Insurance Awards

NPAI exists to protect Community Pharmacy against the increasingly complex demands of its customers as it takes on yet more clinical front-line healthcare duties. The team is passionate about going the extra mile to protect its members and policyholders and was delighted to win the Specialist Coverage Award at the 2025 National Insurance Awards. Lisa Banks, Managing Director of Pharmacy Insurance, explains the significant enhancements NPAI has developed and delivered in the past year to deserve this industry accolade.

The last 12 months have really tested NPAI’s experience, agility and ability to adapt our cover to meet the fast-changing needs of our policyholders. As we are all too aware, Community Pharmacy has faced the most significant changes to its clinical primary care responsibilities in a generation. The NPAI team’s unparalleled understanding of Community Pharmacy has allowed us to react immediately to the radical changes it’s facing in its role as ‘front door to the NHS’. The cover enhancements and new products we’ve been able to deliver with speed, thanks to our in-house pharmacy, underwriting and legal expertise, continue to provide our policyholders with the specialist coverage they need to deliver yet more essential healthcare services to the communities they serve.

‘Following where Pharmacy goes’

At NPAI, we pride ourselves on ‘following where pharmacy goes’. During 2024, the NHS introduced a series of strategic initiatives which saw Community Pharmacy taking on a number of new primary care responsibilities. These included the launch of Pharmacy First, enhancements to the prescribing of medication, the early diagnosis of cancer screening pilot and the Independent Prescribing Pathfinder programme.
Accordingly, we developed our strategic goals for 2024-25 to protect Community Pharmacy against the complex and high risks associated with these NHS initiatives, as well as support them in diversifying into new private services to boost revenue. We undertook an urgent and in-depth review of our policyholders’ evolving protection requirements and developed specialist coverage with significant enhancements to our existing indemnity cover within days, to ensure our policyholders were protected and able to offer the new NHS services. This was critical, as without indemnity cover, these services could not operate.

Supporting Community Pharmacy in its delivery of Pharmacy First

Since the launch of Pharmacy First in January 2024, over 99% of pharmacies in England have commenced prescribing essential medication and antibiotics through the initiative and over two million consultations have taken place. To make sure our policyholders – that’s over 60% of the Community Pharmacy market – were ready to deliver their extended responsibilities, we enhanced our standard cover to include the NHS Pharmacy First Service, expanded NHS Pharmacy Contraception Service and re-launched NHS Hypertension Case-Finding Service. We enhanced cover to indemnify the administration of all vaccinations, including COVID, flu and travel vaccinations to non-pharmacist staff. By allowing technicians and non-pharmacy staff to administer vaccinations, our cover frees up pharmacists so they can perform essential Pharmacy First prescribing duties.

Supporting Pharmacist prescribers of the future

As part of the NHS’s recovery plan and goal to provide better access for patients to healthcare, all Pharmacy students will graduate with a prescribing qualification from 2026. This is one of the greatest changes to pharmacy education for decades. However, the graduates must undertake a period of training with a qualified Pharmacist Designated Prescribing Practitioner (DPP) in a pharmacy setting before they can legally prescribe. To support this requirement and ensure the future Prescribing Pharmacists can support the NHS’s recovery plan, NPAI has extended its cover, without extra charge, to cover employed Designated Prescribing Practitioners for training of newly qualified independent prescribers working for our policy holders. This enhancement reflects NPAI’s commitment to protect the evolution of community pharmacy, by enabling the independent prescribers of the future to practice.

Meeting the requirement for Indemnity cover for NHS pilots

We have and continue to work closely with the NHS to provide specialist cover for pilot schemes essential to the evolution of NHS services and patient access to primary care. These pilots include the NHS Independent Prescriber Pathfinder pilot and NHS Supporting Early Detection of Cancer (Community Pharmacy) pilot. The Independent Prescriber Pathfinder pilot has been developed to introduce Prescribing as part of Community Pharmacy and identify optimal processes, governance and digital requirements before the service can be rolled out formally.

The NHS Early Detection of Cancer pilot allows pharmacists to refer patients directly, without the need to see a GP first, to a rapid diagnostics team, with the aim to catch cancer early and save more lives. NPAI has agreed to indemnify policyholders taking part in the NHS Early Detection of Cancer pilot without extra charge and to cover the Independent Prescribers pilot without extra charge, provided they already have prescribing cover.

Supporting the development of new private services

Community Pharmacy is experiencing the greatest cuts to funding from the NHS in over 10 years. Accordingly, our policyholders are diversifying into new private services to boost revenue. To support them as their practices develop, we reviewed our coverage for private services. We now cover weight loss prescribing, and an extensive list of private treatments and advanced services such diabetes management, allergy and cholesterol testing, hair loss and erectile dysfunction without extra charge, helping pharmacies access new income streams.

We have also launched new products for treatments including Botox, Dermal Fillers, Ear Microsuction, Cryotherapy and other aesthetic treatments. Our new products have the added benefit of access to our award-winning in-house claims team, staffed with qualified lawyers to assist our customers when they need support.

Award winning cover and service every day of the year

I’m delighted that the important work the team here at NPAI does has been recognized and celebrated by the industry with the Specialist Coverage Award at the National Insurance Awards. But then I am hugely proud of the team every day of the year; for their hard work, enthusiasm and dedication to our policyholders. Their work has been tested to the hilt over the last twelve months and will continue to be so as Community Pharmacy’s responsibilities expand and diversify. And whatever the future holds, we will continue to be an agent and enabler of change in our sector by offering the specialist cover our customers require and deserve as they face the exacting challenges that lie ahead.