Hints and Tips is a quarterly bulletin designed to help our dispensing contractors with their interaction with NHS Prescription Services.

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July 2024 - available online here

In this edition:

• Prescription switching - reduce the chances of it happening to you
• NHS Prescription Prepayment Certificates (PPC)
• Medicines covered by the Hormone Replacement Therapy Prescription Prepayment Certificate (HRT PPC)
• Claiming free NHS prescriptions
• Submitting electronic prescription service (EPS) tokens
• End of month batch submissions

Prescription switching - reduce the chances of it happening to you

Prescription switching occurs when Dispensing Contractors submit prescriptions to the incorrect patient charge/exemption group.

When this happens, we are required to “switch” the charge status, before we can process the prescription for payment or reimbursement. This can lead to incorrect reimbursement for contractors.

Read these tips to help you submit prescriptions correctly.

NHS Prescription Prepayment Certificates (PPC)

A PPC could help your patients save money on their NHS prescription charges.

Both the three and 12 month PPCs cover all NHS prescriptions, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT) items. Patients with a valid PPC can receive all their NHS prescriptions without additional charges.

If a patient who doesn’t have a PPC is prescribed HRT, they may benefit more with the HRT PPC. This certificate enables patients to save money on certain medicines.

You can help raise awareness of PPCs by ordering and displaying the HC20 poster from the Primary Care Support England online portal.

You can also share the resources about the HRT PPC in your pharmacy.

Medicines covered by the Hormone Replacement Therapy Prescription Prepayment Certificate (HRT PPC)

From Thursday 1 August 2024, the following medicines will no longer be in scope for the HRT PPC:

• Bedol
• Climanor
• Clinorette

This is due to the items being discontinued. As Climanor is being removed, the medicine medroxyprogesterone on its own will also be removed from the list.

The list of items covered by the HRT PPC are included in the Drug Tariff.

Additionally, patients can check their medicine is covered by the HRT PPC at www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/hrt-ppc-medicines

Claiming free NHS prescriptions

Pharmacy teams have a responsibility to collect patient signatures, and accurately record and report patients’ declaration of entitlement to free NHS prescriptions.

Each time a patient declares they are exempt from paying an NHS prescription charge, you must ask them (or their representative) to:

• mark the correct box for why they didn’t pay
• read and sign the patient declaration
• produce evidence of their eligibility

You must tell patients that it is their responsibility to provide correct information. Incorrect declarations may lead to the patient receiving a penalty charge of up to £100.

Encourage your patients to check they’re entitled to free NHS prescriptions using the NHS eligibility checker.

Accurate recording and reporting of patients’ declarations is crucial for the verification of claims, ensuring that patients are exempt. This helps prevent and detect fraud and error of NHS resources.

Download free NHS prescription resources

Submitting electronic prescription service (EPS) tokens

You must submit all EPS tokens to us as per Part XVI of the Drug Tariff and keep them separated from FP10 prescription forms, unless:

• the patient is age exempt (and the patient’s age is printed on the front of the script)
• the prescription contains free of charge items only
• the prescription has been confirmed as exempt by the RTEC (Real Time Exemption Checking) system

EPS tokens are submitted for exemption checking purposes and for a record of the paid declaration made by patients. You can find out more about EPS tokens in the Drug Tariff.

Read about the tokens you must submit with your end of month submissions.

End of month batch submissions

When sending in your end of month batch submission please use the correct address labels which are posted out to you on a quarterly basis. This helps us to quickly identify each account type when they arrive to us.

You must send us your end of month batch submissions no later than the 5th day of the month following that in which the supply was made.