Industry leaders have demanded more transparency in NHS pharmacy payments after businesses revealed shortfalls of up to £37,000 each in the last two years.

The calls came as PSNC reminded contractors the deadline for requesting that their payments up to the end of March 2009 be checked was June 30.

Payment problems have been occurring since pharmacy’s paymaster, the NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA), introduced its automated CIP payment system.

One contractor told C+D they had lost more than £37,000 in total due to underpayments. Others reported losses of up to £8,000 and multiples expressed concern at the situation. Boots, Lloydspharmacy and Asda all said they had experienced difficulties with payments and would back more transparency in payments.

Umesh Modi, a specialist pharmacy financial adviser at accounting firm Silver Levene said pharmacists had seen “erratic” payments since the introduction of CIP and warned this could threaten the survival of some businesses. He called for more transparency and said pharmacists should be able to see how payments were calculated.

One contractor agreed: “There is no way to check exactly how we’re paid and no transparency. I’ve been grossly underpaid and the system should be so transparent that we should be able to check every script.”

Fingers were pointed at NHS BSA for the administrative burden and problems caused by the system, but others urged greater action from pharmacy bodies. Another contractor said: “I phoned PSNC and they said I should call NHS BSA, but they’re the people representing us so they should have made an effort to take up my case.”

The DH said it was working with NHS BSA and PSNC to introduce more transparency into payments. And NHS BSA said new sorting arrangements introduced in April would help to resolve some of the accuracy problems.