Extra 14p per CD for four months
Pharmacy contractors in England are to get an extra 14p for each Controlled Drug prescription they dispense for four months in order to compensate them for losses caused by a change to the way prescriptions were processed by the pricing office late in 2006.
The Department of Health has agreed to pay a total of £850,000
because changes to the pricing of prescriptions meant that not all contractors
received all the fees they were due on instalment prescriptions for CDs.
The additional payment will be added to the Schedule 2 CD dispensing
fee for all FP10 MDA prescriptions dispensed from the beginning of December
2007 to the end of March 2008. The fee will return to the current level
of £1.28 in April 2008.
Lindsay McClure, head of information services at the Pharmaceutical Services
Negotiating Committee, explained that the Prescription Pricing Division
had notified contractors about a change in the way they should endorse
CD prescriptions in its ImPACT newsletter, but not everyone had acted
on it and those who did not had lost out. She said that the compensation
was being targeted as closely as possible.
Sue Sharpe, PSNC chief executive, said: “A fair settlement has
been agreed. The DoH has listened to the PSNC and now recognises the
impact that last year’s change in the processing of instalment
dispensing prescriptions by the Prescription Pricing Division has had
on some pharmacy contractors.”
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