From Mrs G. A. Brown, MRPharmS
SIR,-I should like to respond to Mr Axon's comments to my letter (PJ, March 18, p437).
We are legally entitled to this money now, not by the end of 2001.
England is now three months ahead of Wales. It is three weeks since my original letter and we still have not been paid for September's prescriptions - due to a hold up with August's statistics. Why can we not be paid?
Enhanced advances only started on March 1, 2000. One hundred per cent advance of an abnormally low item value is an automatic underpayment. Every month I am being underpaid by a minimum of £1.55 per item; that is the difference between a very low item cost for August and my average. That does equate to £1,000s.
As a local pharmaceutical committee member, I do know that many others are in similar situations but I would point out that contractors are very poorly informed as individuals by the Welsh Central Pharmaceutical Committee and the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee and we should consider any errors made with endorsements, etc. It will be close on a year in some cases before we find out our errors and then they will have been compounded month on month.
I would say it is the PSNC that is misguided and out of touch, and this is not good enough.
Gail Brown
Wrexham, Clwyd