Practitioner & Counter Fraud Services (P&CFS) are responsible for receiving and pricing all NHS prescriptions dispensed in Scotland to ensure that Community Pharmacists, Dispensing Doctors and Appliance Suppliers are accurately paid on time.
On average 5 – 6 million prescriptions over a 21 working day cycle are processed, from more than 1500 contractors. You can see why automation is increasing and why it is so important to endorse on both your electronic messages and paper prescriptions.
You will all have different ways of counting your prescriptions in the pharmacy, but it is important to remember what should be counted for your GP34 Declaration Form. All of your prescription forms and items should be counted except from eMAS & UCF which we will guide you through below.
eMAS, UCF and MCR will be counted differently from your other prescriptions.
eMAS
UCF
Universal Claims Framework (UCF) supports electronic claiming for pharmacy-led services. As these are sent electronically, regardless of whether a prescription is generated by your PMR, a paper form is not required, out with those that are required to be sent to the GP practice. No UCF form or item should be recorded on your GP34. Please see this handy table for a full guide on the information needed for each UCF prescription type.
The only instance for pharmacy-led services where a form and item should be counted, is when a CPUS form is used where the CHI is not available.
MCR
CMS CP3 registration forms should be counted as 1 form, 0 items. For MCR serial prescriptions, once the last instalment has been dispensed it should be submitted and counted as 1 form, 0 items. MCR items and instalments are paid electronically but the prescription is needed for auditing purposes.
For any items that have not been collected or not dispensed, ensure that the electronic message is amended before you submit the prescription.
With the increase of automation and use of electronic messages for payment, we have developed our checking database to accommodate looking at these electronic messages to support you with accurate reimbursement and remuneration. We continue to report to pharmacy owners our observations on what we find and where applicable arrange for adjustments to be made via P&CFS.
Our prescription price monitoring includes:
From our checks we give members feedback on the quality of their submissions detailing our findings of anomalies of endorsing (paper and electronic), claiming of handling charges, out of pocket expenses, ePay discrepancies on pack size and quantities, whole packs, Methadone fees and missed opportunities for instalment claiming and broken bulk and any adjustments that may be made.