Contractors are still losing money as they fail to complete prescriptions accurately, the Prescription Pricing Division (PPD) has warned.

During a visit to the PPD, C+D was told that wherever prescriptions were switched from exempt to paid status, it was “actually a person making that decision” not technology. But if prescriptions are left blank on the back, they will be switched to paid unless a patient is age exempt and computer-generated evidence of this appears on the front of the script.

The PPD warned that it still received many prescriptions like this and said it had been talking to some multiple groups about the problem.

Chris Forster, managing director of Fairman Chemists, which has six pharmacies in the north east, visited the PPD with C+D. He said the new automated processing sytem required more accuracy from pharmacists and added: “They’re taking money from us for being inefficient with virtually no warning.”

John D’Arcy, interim managing director at Numark, said he sympathised with pharmacists. He explained: “OK so you should do it properly, but in a community pharmacy you have got rather a lot to do.”

He said it seemed “inflexible” and “unfair” of the PPD to be taking money owed to pharmacists simply because they had not ticked a box properly.