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Letters to the Editor
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Prescription pricing
Reply from Fiona
Punchard, communications manager, Prescription Pricing Division
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What moves are being made to save us work instead of giving us more to do?
From Mr J. L. Nunney, MRPharmS
I am outraged to find that the NHS Business Services Authority Prescription
Pricing Division (PPD) is rolling out new mechanisms for processing paper
prescriptions in the form of the Capacity Improvement Programme.
Community
pharmacists will have to separate out all broken bulk prescriptions and
prescriptions where calendar packs have been cut up, eg,
atenolol 50mg tablets 30, supplied from a 28 calendar pack, when submitting
prescriptions for remuneration.
Outer pack dispensing is safer and quicker. I suggest no one would dispute
this. But medicines manufacturers do not agree on a standard pack
size between 28 and 30 days, eg, perindopril 30 pack, and some GPs
still prescribe 30-day prescriptions routinely. However, I do not believe
the PPD has tried to influence either group to change their practices.
Instead it is giving hard-pressed community pharmacists another job to
do each month.
May I also ask why the movers and shakers at the PPD have made no progress
towards e-prescription processing? Why do community pharmacists not,
in the 21st century, send secure prescription data by secure line direct
to the PPD, or at least a secure disc through the post? Instead we have
to send a box of paper prescriptions sorted (time-consuming) and posted
in the same way, I guess, since the beginning of the NHS.
Let us hear
what progress is being made to save us work instead of giving us more
to do. John Nunney
London
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FIONA PUNCHARD, communications manager, Prescription Pricing Division,
responds:
The NHS Business Services Authority Prescription Pricing Division
(PPD) processes over two million prescription items every working
day, determining payments for pharmacists and other dispensing contractors.
Annual payments to contractors made on behalf of the NHS total almost £8bn.
The current reimbursement and remuneration process requires the monthly
submission of paper prescription batches by more than 11,000 dispensing
contractors. The
PPD calculate payments due to contractors which are then made through linked
computer systems. The current process requires a high degree of manual intervention
by operators.
The new Capacity Improvement Programme (CIP) system processes prescription
information with a significantly greater degree of automation. The CIP uses
high-speed optical
scanning equipment and intelligent character recognition software to collect
information from prescription forms and an automated rules engine then determines
the payment due to contractors.
The CIP will replace existing systems ensuring
that prescriptions are priced, with increased efficiency and speed, and within
the required timescales, despite increasing prescription volumes. Importantly,
the automated rules engine will process prescriptions submitted electronically
through the Electronic Prescription Service, as it rolls out nationally.
Only a small number of pharmacy contractor accounts are being processed through
the CIP at this early stage, but there will be a gradual roll-out to all
dispensing contractors. Individual dispensing contractors will be contacted
before we
start processing accounts using the CIP.
Within the new CIP process, there will be some manual intervention by experienced
operators for processing those items that cannot be handled automatically,
including the few items (0.25 per cent) where the pharmacist needs to claim
broken bulk
and for calendar pack items where the quantity dispensed differs from the
calendar pack quantity.
The PPD welcomes feedback from customers, who can telephone our dedicated
helpline on 0845 610 1171 with any enquiries about prescription processing
or contractor
payments. |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal