§ Mr. ToddTo ask the Secretary of State for Health on how many occasions during each of the last three years pharmacists were denied prescription reimbursement by the NHS because they had submitted forms for prescription charge exemption that had been erroneously completed by patients; and what was the estimated cost of these erroneously completed forms to pharmacists in each of those years. [149063]
June July August September Items on forms submitted as exempt without a declaration 118,013 107,911 105,822 104,025 Items to which concession applied for patients under 16 or 60 and over 37,965 35,834 36,583 35,290 Charges deducted from payments—line one less line two x £6.00 (£) 480,288 432,462 415,436 412,410 Total items dispensed 45,049,254 42,314,572 43,062,881 42,518,754 Percentage of items on forms submitted as exempt without a completed declaration—line one/line four 0.26 0.26 0.25 0.24 If previous patterns of submitting forms without declarations of exemption were similar, then adjustments to payments would have been around £7 million in 1997–98, £7.4 million in 1998–99 and £7.8 million in 1999–2000.