In Views

Follow this topic

Bookmark

Record learning outcomes

By P3pharmacy editor Arthur Walsh

There is much talk of how pharmacy technology is evolving in response to the changing demands of patients and policymakers, with Labour’s 10-year plan playing a galvanising role.

A key part of this agenda hinges on automating steps in the dispensing process, which can free up time and reduce the sector’s (already low) error rate – and may become more mainstream from this month onwards as the long-awaited hub-and-spoke legislation comes into force. 

But community pharmacy will always be about human beings: those delivering the service and the patients who receive it, as well as staffers in the NHS structures built to oversee the provision of healthcare. And one thing that humans do from time to time is disagree. 

As a case in point, I recently spoke to Graham Jones, owner of Shrivenham Pharmacy in Swindon. The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) is refusing to pay him for Pharmacy First consultations that it acknowledges he carried out and has evidenced with all the necessary digital records. 

The problem is that when his staff submitted the claims for May they weren’t accepted by the BSA – it says they were sent via the wrong web page, he says the text was misleading – and once Graham realised, it was too late. A new, much shorter timeframe for claims had just been implemented and his pleas fell on the wrong side of the changed rules.

Since then he has attempted to reason with the BSA, his local NHS body and others. All of them – even pharmacy minister Stephen Kinnock’s office – have rebuffed him with the same unwavering ‘computer says no’ answer, leaving him £1,600 short.

In a funny bit of timing, a day or two after speaking with Graham I noticed that an independent in West Bromwich had knocked Pharmacy2U off its perch and topped the New Medicine Service (NMS) league table for May with an unbelievable 8,005 NMS claims (Pharmacy2U achieved 4,604 in the same month). 

It turned out that figure really was unbelievable. When I reached out to the pharmacy, they explained it was a data entry error and the real figure was somewhat lower. 

Not their error, moreover, but the BSA’s – who presumably did not feel honour-bound to pay out £112,000 as a result of its mistake but are determined to withhold much-needed Pharmacy First income from an independent contractor over what it describes as his mistake. 

I accept that the BSA fulfils an important function in questioning claims from pharmacies and other primary care providers and ensuring that taxpayers’ money isn’t thrown about carelessly. But as Graham’s case illustrates, a rigid focus on process can come at the expense of fairness and common sense.