Pricing blunder leaves pharmacy businesses underpaid by £470,000

An underpayment of £47 over a two year period, when an average pharmacy will have an NHS turnover of approx £1.5 million over that same period is minuscule and hardly worthy of the description "blunder". Please try to be reasonable and responsible with reporting (even on quiet news days) and hopefully, when there is a real issue to resolve, pharmacy will be taken as serious negotiators rather than serial whingers.

An underpayment of £47 over a two year period is at first glance minuscule but that with other errors in reimbursement adds up to a considerable sum to many contractors.We as pharmacy staff in general would very quickly be accused of deliberate fraud and face severe penalties were we to misclaim to any extent.

Thanks both for your comments.

While I agree that a £45 underpayment is unlikely to have had any impact on a pharmacy business, some businesses were underpaid by significantly more than that, and, regardless of the values in this particular case, pricing errors are a real issue for some contractors - last year the sector was awarded a £20 million compensation package in recognition of errors made by NHS PS, and multiples have recently told C+D that this payment was essential.

Through our Fight for Fairness campaign, we hope that by highlighting ongoing pricing errors, however small they might seem individually, we will be able to help ensure that contractors get further compensation where it is due.

I think pharmacies deserve to be paid correctly and accurately for what dispensing we do. As Patrick says, if we did the same to the NHSBSA, we would be accused of deliberate fraud e.g.: remember the claiming for the calendar packs (if you did not endorse correctly, you could be claiming for more than you gave); not using the N/D correctly (you need to score the item out otherwise you could be claiming for what you have not supplied).

If we did not pay our wholesalers the exact figure for any invoice, would we call them "whingers" for wanting the correct money? No I thought not.

Please get some perspective... pharmacy will be taken as serious negotiators when we DEMAND to be paid correctly, fairly and correctly (every time). Otherwise people will see us as pushovers.