The Prescription Pricing Authority has issued an assurance to contractors that their reimbursement and remuneration takes correct account of no-charge items prescribed on chargeable prescriptions.
Commenting on an allegation that prescription charges were incorrectly deemed to have been collected on such items (PJ, June 3, p834), Mrs Elizabeth Stobbart (director of operations, PPA) told The Journal on June 2 that the declaration on form FP34C of items on which prescription charges had not been collected, but which were included on charge-paid forms, was ignored for the purposes of the advance payment made in the month following that in which forms were submitted for pricing, but that everything was corrected once prescriptions were fully processed.
She said: "For advance payment purposes the no-charge items in the chargeable group (as declared in the small box on the FP34C) are not taken into account. The advance payment is based on a number of variables (the number of items as initially declared by the contractor, the latest available average prescription cost and the relevant inflation factor). The number of no-charge items contained within the chargeable group will have a very small impact on the advance payment and the variable factors outlined above have a much greater significance on a month-by-month basis."
She added: "The PPA identifies no-charge prescriptions contained within the chargeable group during the data entry processing stage. These are identified as each prescription form is processed and a no-charge endorsement is entered into the system as appropriate. Where an item is identified by the PPA as being no charge, but the contractor has forgotten or failed to mark this as no-charge, PPA staff will nonetheless correct this and will enter a no-charge endorsement into the system. It follows that charges are not deducted by the PPA for no-charge items."