In another twist in C+D's Fight for Fairness campaign, Kamsons Pharmacy discovered that confidential prescription payment information for 35 of its branches was sent to a competitor because of an error at NHS Prescription Services.

Kamsons Pharmacy was first alerted to the error when it did not receive its monthly payments schedule in July. NHS Prescription Services advised the group's owner Waremoss to wait to see if it arrived later. But, on August ,1 a competitor chain phoned to say it had wrongly received monthly remittance advice and payment schedules for 35 branches.

Kamsons said payment schedules contained "highly confidential" details about businesses and branded the error "appalling".

NHS Prescription Services confirmed the error, saying its service had "fallen short of what we would expect" on this occasion and that it would take action to "ensure this type of issue is not repeated".

But Kamsons hit out at the paymaster and has sent a letter of complaint over the incident. "Each of our pharmacies has to spend hours undertaking information governance (IG) audits and implementing IG requirements," said Bharat Chotai, senior director of operations at Kamsons' owner, Waremoss. "I would be interested to see whether NHS PS has undertaken such an audit."

He added: "The information [on payment schedules] is highly confidential as it shows prescription numbers, enhanced service uptake and NHS turnover for each pharmacy. To send it to a competitor is just appalling."

In a letter to NHS Prescription Services, Kamsons said: "We all make one-off mistakes, but this serious error occurred in the same month that one of our bundles of prescriptions was mislaid in your offices. We have also had to claim back over £84,000 of payments in the last two years from wrongly switched prescriptions and missed expensive item reimbursements."

NHS Prescription Services said it would contact Kamsons to "provide a full explanation, apologise for the incident and how the enquiry was handled".

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