The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee claimed on January 19 that prescription fraud is now costing the National Health Service £150m a year (our Lobby correspondent writes).
However, its report on the NHS accounts for 1997-98, which included the claim, accepts that this is only an estimate because detected fraud was only £2.6m. This, it says, is unacceptably low.
The committee report says that fraud is contributing to the serious financial difficulties experienced by many health authorities and NHS trusts and that reducing it will release resources for patient care.
"The NHS Executive has taken steps to get a firmer grip on the stock of fraud and ways of preventing and detecting it, especially the creation of a directorate of counter-fraud. . . . The success of these initiatives is crucial in stemming this enormous drain on NHS resources," the report says.
It adds that the NHS Executive's lack of realistic estimates of overall fraud levels is unsatisfactory. The report comments that where fraud has been detected, few prosecutions have resulted and recoveries have been small.
The committee concludes that the overall challenges facing the NHS are immense and that service providers "cannot afford to handicap themselves by tolerating anything other than the highest standards of financial management."