NHS Prescription Services (NHS PS) has breached information governance requirements 19 times since 2007, with confidential information revealed to outside parties four times, a C+D investigation has revealed.

The sector's paymaster sent prescription or payment details to the wrong recipients three times in 2011, the investigation, which is part of C+D's Fight for Fairness campaign, revealed. Other problems recorded since the introduction of the CIP automated payment system in 2007 included prescription batches being misplaced, mixed up with others at the scanner and misplaced in internal mail. And in one of the recorded incidents, five batches of prescriptions were stolen from a secure courier contracted by NHS PS.

The paymaster stressed it had put "stringent controls" in place to maintain information security, which had led to better incident reporting.

"Since the beginning of January 2010 there has been increased information governance awareness and diligence by NHS PS staff, which has improved the reporting of breaches," it told C+D.

John D'Arcy, managing director at Numark, said that if the incidents reported represented all breaches at NHS PS, then the situation didn't seem "too bad". He added that many of them may not have had significant consequences for pharmacists or patients. "NHS PS is dealing with millions of prescriptions every year. That's a lot of bits of paper and even if some have gone missing, it doesn't necessarily mean that they have fallen into the wrong hands," he said.

But Mr D'Arcy warned that other data losses, such as any prescriptions lost in transit between pharmacies and the paymaster would not have been captured by the C+D results.

Pharmacist Ravi Vaitha, whose employer Kamsons saw its confidential payment information sent to a competitor earlier this year, branded the findings "worrying"."It's quite a high number and it is a bit worrying," he told C+D. Mr Vaitha also questioned the paymaster's information governance procedures after discovering two further serious breaches had occurred since his experience in August.

"We spend all these hours making sure what we are sending meets their specific requirements, and I wonder if they do the same?" he asked.

Key NHS PS information governance breaches

December 2007 – Back-up tape for Wakefield processing site containing prescription images for November 20, 2007 goes missing November 2009 – Five batches of prescriptions are stolen from an NHS PS-contracted courier November 2010 – In two incidents, prescription batches are mixed up at the scanner February 2011 – Unable to locate four processed prescription batches in warehouse August 2011 – Kamsons' payment schedule is sent to a competitor September 2011 – Copies of prescription forms are referred back to the wrong pharmacy contractor October 2011 – Pharmacy staff see a confidential payment adjustment letter after NHS PS sends it to the branch, rather than the owner  

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